4" 


*^f 


sx 


^v 


f 


/ 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


aaaKia  xaiHdwva 


COMMERCE,  CHRISTIANITY,  AND  CIVILIZATION. 

VERSUS 

BRITISH  FREE  TRADE. 


LETTERS 


REPLY  TO  THE  LONDON  TIMES; 


BY 

H.  C.  CAREY. 


'•Oh  wad  some  power  the  giftie  gie  us 
To  see  oursel's  as  others  see  as  ! 
It  wad  frne  monie  a  blunder  free  as 
And  foolish  notion." — Burns. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS,   PRINTER,   705   JAYXK   STREET. 

1S76. 


The  first  four  of  these  letters  were  sent  to  a  friend 
in  London,  in  tlie  hope  of  thus  securing  their  appear- 
ance in  the  Times.  Replying  to  this  suggestion,  he 
said,  in  effect,  that  that  paper,  in  common  with  nearly 
all  other  English  journals,  was  so  hopelessly  given 
over  to  the  advocacy  of  free-trade  doctrines  as  to 
make  it  wholly  useless  to  offer  them  for  publication. 
This  will  account  to  American  readers  for  the  delay 
that  has  attended  their  publication  here. 


n 


LETTERS  TO  THE  LONDON  TIMES. 


LETTER  FIRST. 


To  the  Editor  of  (he  Times : — 

A  FRIEND  abroad  having  kindly  sent  me  your  paper  of  22d  ult., 
I  find  therein  the  words  "ignorance  and  imbecility,"  "folly  and 
iniquity,"  unhesitatingly  applied  to  persons  holding,  in  regard  to  a 
purely  scientific  question  now  much  discussed,  opinions  differing 
from  your  own  ;  and  myself  specially  selected  for  introduction  to 
your  numerous  readers  as  the  "  redoubtable  champion"  in  reference 
to  whom  such  expressions  may  most  properly  be  used.  Believing, 
Mr.  Editor,  that  in  all  this  you  have  made  a  serious  mistake,  and 
that  it  has  resulted  from  a  steady  contemplation  of  one  side  of  the 
shield  to  an  entire  neglect  of  the  other,  I  propose  as  briefly  as  may 
be  possible  to  present  this  latter,  in  the  hope  of  satisfying  you 
that  on  this  important  question  men  may  perhaps  differ  from  you 
without  forfeiting  their  claim  to  be  possessed  of  sense,  and  entitled 
to  be  treated  as  almost,  even  if  not  quite,  equal  with  yourself  in 
their  right  to  be  spoken  of,  and  to,  as  gentlemen. 

The  passages  in  which  these  words  occur  are  here  given,  as 
follows : — 

"Yet  as  to  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  English  politioal  economy,  which  is  held  in  this 
'country  as  an  unquestionable  scientific  truth,  to  question  which  must  indicate  igno- 
rance or  imbecility,  our  kinsmen  and  fellow  Bubjects  of  the  Dominion  are  evidently 
heretical.  It  is  not  the  French  population  alone  or  chiefly  which  is  protectionist. 
Some  of  the  leading  advocates  for  the  artificial  fostering  of  '  home  industry.'  are  of 
British  origin,  and  the  interests  which  are  to  benefit  by  the  proposed  legislation  are 
principally  directed  by  men  of  the  same   race.     Even  Englishmen  and  Scotchmen 

who  have  grown  up  in  our  Free  Trade  pale,  and  have  been  taught  to  believe  that 
the  exploded  doctrine  could  not  be  honestly  held  by  an  intelligent  person,  Bud  ex- 
cuses for  a  reconsideration  of  their  opinions  when  they  settle  in  the  new  country. 
Their  argument,  or,  at  least,  their  assertion,  is  that  there  is  seme  essential  difference 
between  a  new  country  and  an  old  one,  between  a  large  country  and  a  small  one, 
between  a  thinly-populated  country  and  one  where  the  population  is  dense  as  in 
England.  Free  Trade  is  never  attacked  in  principle  ;  it  is  always  assume,!  as  the 
ideal  to  which  the  economy  of  a  State  should  tend;  but  the  friends  of  Protec- 
tion are  always  ready  with  some  exceptional  circumstances  which  make  the  appli- 
cation of  the  theoretically  perfect  system  impracticable  in  their  own  community. 
The  late  Mr.  Carey,  of  Philadelphia,  the  redoubtable  champion  of  the  protective  Bystem 
in  the  United  States,  labored  to  prove  that  Free  Trade  was  unsuited  to  the  present 
condition  of  his  country,  but  that,  if  the  Americans  would  only  establish  a  stringent 
system  of  imposts  upon  foreign  manufactures,  jind  persevere  in  it  long  enough,  they 


would  call  into  being  an  industrial  power  which  would  enable  them  in  due  time  to 
burst  upon  the  world  with  a  Free  Trade  policy,  and  overwhelm  all  creation  with 
their  goods.  This  theory,  repeated  in  hundreds  of  magazines  and  newspapers,  and 
forming  the  staple  of  endless  orations,  has  affected  the  economical  policy  of  the 
Union  up  to  the  present  time,  and  is  held  by  multitudes  even  of  those  whose  private 
interests  suffer  by  it.  To  make  the  country  independent  of  the  foreigner,  capable 
of  producing  everything  for  itself,  and  self-sufficient  even  if  shut  off  from  the  rest  of 
the  world  by  a  powerful  enemy,  is  a  principle  of  government  gravely  avowed  by 
persons  who  on  other  matters  judge  and  speak  with  intelligence.  .  .  .  There- 
fore, as  a  financial  policy,  pure  and  simple,  as  the  means  of  present  relief,  as  the 
direct  path  to  prosperity,  the  Canadian  Board  of  Trade  recommends  Protection.  It 
is  not  that  indirect  taxation  is  the  easiest  of  application  in  practice  ;  it  is  that  in  a 
large  country  and  scattered  population  customs  duties  are  the  only  means  of  reach- 
ing the  mass  of  those  who  should  contribute  to  the  State's  necessities  ;  it  is  protec- 
tion for  itself  that  we  find  maintained  as  au  economical  doctrineon  opposite  sides  of 
the  globe,  by  vigorous  communities  of  British  origin,  after  we  have  been  maintain- 
ing its  folly  and  iniquity  for  thirty  years." 

Waiving  for  the  moment  any  comment  upon  the  views  thus  pre- 
sented. I  ask  you  to  look  with  me  to  that  fountain-head,  or  well- 
spring,  of  economic  science,  the  Wealth  of  Nations,  a  work  that  has 
stood  a  century's  test,  and  stands  now. so  far  ahead  of  those  of  its 
writer's  countrymen  who  claim  him  as  their  chief  while  discarding 
his  most  essential  principles  as  to  warrant  the  belief  that  he  will 
be  remembered  when  they  and  their  works  will  have  been  long 
forgotten.  Why  should  this  be  so?  For  the  reason,  that  in  his 
high  appreciation,  manifested  throughout  his  admirable  work,  of 
the  superior  advantage,  material,  mental,  and  moral,  of  a  domestic 
commerce  over  foreign  trade,  lie  struck  the  keynote  of  a  sound  social 
science.  Exchanges  performed  twice  or  thrice  a  year  were  in  his 
eye  far  more  profitable  than  those  which  could  be  but  once  per- 
formed. Exchanges  with  neighboring  nations  he  regarded  as  far 
preferable  to  those  with  communities  more  distant.  A  fortiori,  ex- 
changes performed  from  week  to  week,  from  day  to  da}',  from  hour 
to  hour,  from  minute  to  minute,  must  be  still  more  advantageous; 
and  so,  in  his  view,  they  were.  To  the  end  that  such  exchanges 
might  become  possible,  it  was  essential  that  there  should  be  that 
diversification  of  employments  to  the  exposition  of  whose  ad- 
vantages  so  much  of  his  work  was  given.  With  every  step  in  that 
direction  producers  and  consumers  were,  as  lie  saw,  more  nearly* 
brought  together;  production  and  consumption  followed  more 
closely  on  each  other  ;  labor  became  more  and  more  economized ; 
the  various  members  of  society  became  more  and  more  enabled  to 
find  the  places  for  which  they  had  been  intended;  labor  of  all 
kinds  became  more  and  more  productive,  with  hourly  increase 
of  rapidity  in  the  socictary  circulation  and  corresponding  develop- 
'  of  all  those  faculties,  mental  and  moral,  by  which  the 
human  animal  is  distinguished  from  the  brute.  Such,  Mr.  Editor, 
although  not  precisely  so  expressed,  were  the  ideas  Adam  Smith 
il  to  impress  upon  his  countrymen;  and  such,  exactly,  are 
•  which,  as  humble  follower  of  ;i  man  who,  in  my  belief,  is  en- 
titled  to  stand  side  by  side  with  Shakspeare  as  greatest,  of  all  the 
human  productions  of  the  British  soil,  1  have  urged  not  only  on 
my  own  countrymen  but  upon  the   people   of  all  the  nations  ol   the 


earth.  What  there  is  therein  to  warrant  an  attack  like  to  that 
above  reproduced,  I  leave  you  to  determine  for  yourself. 

The  British  policy  of  Smith's  day  was  in  direct  opposition  to 
all  his  teachings.  The  colonist  Briton  was  allowed  to  make  no 
exchanges  with  his  neighbors,  of  wool  for  cloth  or  hats,  of  iron  for 
nails  or  bolts,  of  hides  for  shoes  or  straps,  except  through  the 
medium  of  British  ships,  British  traders,  and  British  shops.  Most 
righteously  was  this  regarded  by  our  great  author  as  "a  manifest 
violation  of  the  most  sacred  rights  of  mankind  ;"  and  as  tending  to 
make,  of  the  great  community  of  which  he  was  a  part,  a  mere 
'•nation  of  shopkeepers,"  amassing  fortune  by  means  of  a  policy  as 
injurious  to  their  victims  as  in  the  end  it  must  prove  destructive  to 
themselves.  Against  that  policy  it  was  that  Smith  raised  his  voice 
when  crying  aloud  for  freedom  of  trade.  With  what  results,  how- 
ever? Has  there  in  the  century  that  since  has  passed  been  any 
single  case  in  which  Britain  has  voluntarily  abandoned  the  system 
which  for  so  long  a  period  had  had  for  its  object  that  of  making  of 
herself  the  "workshop  of  the  world"?  Foreign  tariffs  and  a  con- 
sequent growth  of  competition  for  the  sale  of  manufactured  goods, 
opened  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Huskisson  half  a  century  since,  and 
twenty  years  later  those  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  But  for  American  and 
German  resistance  the  Navigation  Laws  might,  and  probably  would, 
still  remain  on  the  statute  book  of  Britain.  In  the  interest  of  free 
trade  a  reciprocity  treaty,  so  called,  was  obtained  by  Canada  from 
us,  and  the  measure  was  hailed  with  great  delight  by  all  such  gentle- 
men as  now  constitute  the  Cobden  Club.  When,  however,  shortly 
afterward,  the  various  British  possessions  of  this  Western  hemisphere 
sought  to  establish  among  themselves  a  similar  free  trade  measure, 
the  Privy  Council  refused  permission,  on  the  ground  that  such 
measures  were  not  in  accordance  with  the  Imperial  policy.  Re- 
ciprocity had  been  regarded  as  sauce  for  the  goose,  but  could  not  be 
accepted  as  sauce  for  the  gander.  It  may,  as  I  think,  be  doubled  if 
any  single  measure  can  be  shown  as  having  been  adopted  by  Britain, 
except  as  conducive  to  maintenance  of  the  system  denounced  by 
her  great  economist  as  utterly  unworthy  of  the  great  nation  of  which 
"he  was  a  part. 

Years  after  Mr.  Huskisson  had  become  in  part  convinced  of  the 
necessity  for  abandoning  some  of  the  various  modes  of  taxation  of 
other  nations  that  had  till  then  been  practised,  an  eminent  member 
of  parliament  described  in  the  words  that  follow  the  real  objects  of 
men  who  were  the  loudest  in  their  expressions  of  free  trade  admi- 
ration : — 

"It  was  idle  for  us  to  endeavor  to  persuade  other  nations  to  join  with  us  in  adopt- 
ing the  principles  of  what  was  called  free  trade.  Other  nations  knew,  as  well  as  the 
noble  lonl  opposite,  and  those  who  acted  with  him,  that  what  we  meant  by  "  free 
trade"  was  nothing  more  nor  les-  than,  by  means  of  the  great  advantages  we  enjoyed, 
to  get  a  monopoly  of  all  their  markets  for  cur  manufactures,  and  to  prevent  them, 
one  and  all.  from  ever  becoming  manufacturing  nations.  When  the  system  of  reci- 
procity and  free  trade  had  been  proposed  to  a  French  ambassador,  his  remark  was, 
that  the  plan  was  excellent  in  theory,  but.  to  make  it  fair  in  practice,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  defer  the  attempt  to  put  it  in  execution  for  half  a  century,  until  France 


6 

should  be  on  the  same  footing  with  Great  Britain  in  marine,  in  manufactures,  in 
capital,  and  the  many  other  peculiar  advantages  which  it  now  enjoyed.  The  policy 
France  acted  on  was  that  of  encouraging  its  native  manufactures,  and  it  was  a  wise 
policy  ;  because,  if  it  were  freely  to  admit  our  manufactures,  it  would  speedily  be 
reduced  to  the  rank  of  an  agricultural  nation,  and  therefore  a  poor  nation,  as  all 
must  be  that  depend  exclusively  upon  agriculture.  America  acted,  too,  upon  the 
same  principle  with  France.  America  legislated  for  futurity — legislated  for  an  in- 
creasing population.     America,  too,  was  prospering  under  this  system." 

How  the  monopoly  system  thus  described  has  since  been  carried 
into  practical  effect  is  shown  in  the  following  passage  from  a  Report 
made  to  Parliament  b}r  Mr.  Tremenheere: — 

•'  The  laboring  classes  generally  in  the  manufacturing  districts  of  the  kingdom,  and 
especially  in  the  iron  and  coal  districts,  are  very  little  aware  of  the  extent  to  which 
they  are  often  indebted  for  their  being  employed  at  all  to  the  immense  losses  which 
their  employers  voluntarily  incur  in  bad  times,  iu  order  to  destroy  foreign  competi- 
tion, and  to  gain  and  keep  possession  of  foreign  markets.  Authentic  instances  are 
well  known  of  employers  having  in  such  times,  carried  on  their  works  at  a  loss 
amounting  in  the  aggregate  to  £300,000  or  £400,000  in  the  course  of  three  or  four 
years.  If  the  efforts  of  those  who  encourage  the  combinations  to  restrict  the  amount 
of  labor  ;.nd  to  produce  strikes  were  to  be  successful  for  any  length  of  time,  the  great 
accumulations  of  capital  could  no  longer  be  made  which  enable  a  few  of  the  most 
wealthy  capitalists  to  overwhelm  all  foreign  competition  in  times  of  great  depression, 
and  thus  to  clear  the  way  for  the  whole  trade  to  step  in  when  prices  revive,  and  to 
carry  a  great  busiuess  before  foreign  capital  can  again  accumulate  to  such  an  extent 
as  to  be  able  to  establish  a  competition  in  prices  with  any  chance  of  success.  The 
large  capitals  of  this  country  are  the  great  instruments  of  warfare  against  the  com- 
peting capitals  of  foreign  countries,  and  are  the  most  essential  instruments  now 
remaining  by  which  our  manufacturing  supremacy  can  be  maintained  ;  the  other 
elements — cheap  labor,  abundance  of  raw  materials,  means  of  communications,  and 
skilled  labor — being  rapidly  in  process  of  being  equalized." 

Here  is  "warfare."  By  whom,  and  on  whom?  By  the  very  men 
whose  policy  was  denounced  by  Adam  Smith.  Upon  people  of 
distant  lands  who  see  and  know  that  what  they  need  is  that  diver- 
sification of  employments  regarded  by  him  as  so  essential  to  that 
increase  of  mental,  moral,  and  material  force  of  which  we  speak 
as  evidence  of  growing  civilization.  It  is  a  "warfare"  for  pre- 
vention of  any  growth  of  that  domestic  commerce  which  marks 
the  decline  of  barbarism.  Such  being  the  case,  and  that  such  it 
is  cau not  be  denied,  where  would  Adam  Smith  now  stand  were  he 
member  of  any  of  the  communities  upon  which  this  war  was  being 
made?  Assuredly  on  the  side  of  resistance,  that  resistance  taking 
the  form  of  protection  to  the  farmer  in  his  efforts  at  bringing  to 
his  side  the  consumer  of  his  products,  thereby  enabling  him  to 
exchange  both  services  and  products  with  little  intervention  of 
trader  or  transporter,  and  thus  freeing  himself  from  the  necessity 
now  imposed  14)011  the  purely  agricultural  nations  of  the  earth  for 
Limiting  their  exchanges  to  those  made  yearly  or  half  yearly  and 
held  in  so  slight  regard  by  Smith. 

In  another  letter,  1  propose,  Mr.  Editor,  to  exhibit  the  working 
of  the  two  systems  in  an  old  and  a  new  country,  meanwhile  remain- 
ing, 

Yours  respectfully, 

HENEY  C.  CAREY. 
Philadelphia,  Feb.  15,  1870. 


LETTER  SECOND. 

In  assuming,  Mr.  Editor,  as  you  seem  to  do,  that  I  regard  protec- 
tion as  especially  necessary  for  new  countries,  you  are  much  in 
error.  The  societary  laws  are  applicable  to  all  countries  alike,  the 
great  object  to  be  accomplished  being  the  promotion  of  that  domes- 
tic commerce  held  in  so  great  regard  by  the  illustrious  founder  of 
a  real  economic  science.  In  the  days  of  the  later  Stuarts,  when  the 
men  of  the  Rhine  were  enabled  to  boast  that  they  bought  of  the 
stupid  Englishmen  whole  hides  for  sixpence  and  paid  for  them  in 
tails  at  a  shilling,  Britain  stood  as  much  in  need  of  protection  as  we 
do  now.  "So,  too,  was  it  half  a  century  since  when  German  men 
exported  wool  and  rags  and  took  their  pay  in  cloth  and  paper,  pay- 
ing at  the  British  custom  house  a  heavy  tax  for  the  privilege  of 
making  exchanges  among  themselves  through  the  medium  of  Brit- 
ish ships  and  shops.  So,  again,  was  it  less  than  a  century  since  in 
the  now  most  prosperous  and  independent  of  the  manufacturing- 
countries  of  the  world,  as  will  here  be  shown. — Almost  unceasingly  at 
war  abroad  or  at  home;  brought  repeatedly  by  political  and  religious 
dissensions  to  the  verge  of  ruin;  governed  by  priests  and  prostitutes 
in  the  names  of  worthless  kings — France,  on  the  day  of  the  assem- 
ling  of  the  States  Genera],  in  1789,  had  made  so  little  progress  in  the 
industrial  arts  that  her  markets  were  crowded  with  British  wares; 
that  her  workshops  were  closed  ;  that  her  workmen  were  perishing 
for  want  of  food  ;  and  that  the  French  school  of  art  had  almost  en- 
tirely disappeared.  The  Few  were  magnificent — more  so,  perhaps, 
than  any  others  in  Europe.  Of  the  Many  a  large  majority  were  in 
a  state  closely  akin  to  serfage,  and  ignorant  atmost  beyond  concep- 
tion. 

The  Revolution,  however,  now  coming,  the  people  did  for  them- 
selves what  their  masters  had  refused  to  do;  re-establishing  the 
system  of  Colbert,  the  greatest  statesman  the  world  has  yet  seen, 
and  making  protection  the  law  of  the  land.  Since  then,  consuls  and 
kings,  emperors  and  presidents,  have  flitted  across  the  stage ;  con- 
stitutions almost  by  the  dozen  have  been  adopted  ;  the  country  has 
been  thrice  occupied  by  foreign  armies,  and  thrice  has  it  been  com- 
pelled to  pay  the  cost  of  invasion  and  occupation  ;  but  throughout 
all  these  changes  it  has  held  to  protection  as  the  sheet-anchor  of  the 
ship  of  State.  With  what  result?  With  that  of  placing  France  in 
the  lead  of  the  world  in  reference  to  all  that  is  beautiful  in  industrial 
and  pictorial  art.  With  that  of  making  her  more  independent,  com- 
mercially, than  any  other  country  of  the  world.  Why  is  this?  For 
the  reason  that  she  enables  her  artisans  to  pass  over  the  heads  ol' 
other  nations,  scattering  everywhere  the  seeds  of  that  love  of  the 
beautiful  in  which  consists  a  real  civilization,  and  everywhere 
stimulating  while  defying  competition  ;  Britain,  meanwhile,  seeking 
everywhere  to  stifle  competition  by  means  of  cheap  labor,  shoddy 
cloth,   cinder   iron,   and   cottons   that,   as   recently   certified   to   by 


8 

British  merchants  in  China,  lose  a  third  of  their  weight  on  their  first 
immersion  in  the  tab. 

But  a  few  months  since  Monsieur  Michel  Chevalier  gave  to  his 
English  friends  an  eulogium  upon  this  shoddy  system,  saying,  how- 
ever, not  a  word  as  to  the  fact,  that  the  tariff  for  which  he  claims 
the  credit  is  the  most  intelligently,  and  the  most  effectively,  protec- 
tive of  any  in  the  world;  not  a  word  to  show  how  perfectly  it  had 
been  made  to  accord  with  the  views  presented  in  his  then,  as  I 
think,  latest  work,  and  which  read  as  follows: — 

"Every  nation  owes  it  to  itself  to  seek  the  establishment  of  diversification  in  the 
pursuits  of  its  people,  as  Germany  and  England  have  already  done  in  regard  to  cot- 
tons and  woollens,  and  as  France  herself  has  done  in  reference  to  so  many  and  so 
widely  different  departments  of  industry,  this  being  not  an  abuse  of  power  on  the 
part  of  the  government.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  accomplishment  of  a  positive  duty 
which  requires  it  so  to  act  at  each  epoch  in  the  progress  of  a  nation  as  to  fnvor  the 
taking  possession  of  all  the  branches  of  industry  whose  acquisition  is  authorized  by 
the  nature  of  things." 

Prior  to  the  date  of  the  Cobden  treaty,  1860,  the  regime  of  France, 
for  almost  seventy  years,  had  been  that  of  prohibition  so  nearly  abso- 
lute as  almost  to  preclude  the  importation  of  foreign  manufactures 
of  any  description  whatsoever.  Prior  to  18(31,  that  of  this  country 
had  for  a  like  period  of  time,  with  two  brief  and  brilliant  excep- 
tions, been  that  of  revenue,  and  almost  free-trade,  tariffs  dictated  by 
subjects  of  the  cotton  king  holding  a  full  belief  in  the  morality  of 
human  slavery,  and  in  a  sort  of  right  divine  to  buy  and  sell  their 
fellow-men.  We  have  thus  two  contemporaneous  systems  differing 
from  each  other  as  light  does  from  darkness,  and  may  here  with 
some  advantage  study  their  working  as  regards  the  great  question 
now  before  us,  that  of  civilization.  The  last  four  years  prior  to 
1861  were  in  this  country  so  much  disturbed  by  reason  of  the  great 
free-trade  crisis  of  1857  that,  desiring  to  give  every  advantage  to 
free-trade  theorists,  I  prefer  to  throw  them  out,  taking  for  compari- 
son the  year  1856,  one  in  which  the  world  at  large  was  rejoicing  in 
the  receipt  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  gold  from  California  and  Aus- 
tralia; and  when,  if  ever,  our  Southern  States  must  have  been  grow- 
ing rich  and  strong  by  means  of  the  policy  of  which  they  so  long 
had  been  the  ardent  advocates. 

In  that  year  the  domestic  exports  of  France  amounted  to  $310,000,- 
000,  having  far  more  than  trebled  in  twenty-five  years;  doing  this, 
too,  under  a  system  that,  as  we  now  are  told,  must  have  destroyed 
the  power  to  maintain  any  foreign  commerce  whatsoever.  Of  those 
exports,  $1.40,000,000  consisted  of  textile  fabrics  weighing  20,000 
tons,  the  equivalent  of  100,000  bales  of  cotton,  and  sufficient,  per- 
haps, to  load  some  five  and-twenty  of  the  ships  that,  as  1  think, 
were  then  in  use.  The  charge  for  freight  was,  as  may  readily  be 
seen,  quite  insignificant,  and  for  the  reason  that  the  chief  articles  of 
value  were  skill  and  taste,  $100,000,000  of  which  would  not  balance 
a  single  cotton  bale.  Arrived  out,  the  goods  were  all  finished  and 
ready  for  consumption;  and,  as  a  consequence  of  these  great  l'acts, 
there  were  no  people  retaining  for  themselves  so  large  a  proportion 
ol  the  ultimate  prices  of  their  products  as  did  those  of  France. 


9 

At  that  elate  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  Lad  elapsed  since  the 
first  settlement  of  Virginia,  and  the  whole  country  south  of  the 
Potomac,  the  Ohio,  and  the  Missouri,  had  then  been  taken  po 
sion  of  by  men  of  the  English  race,  the  total  population  having 
grown  to  almost  a  dozen  millions.  The  territory  so  occupied  con- 
tained, as  I  believe,  more  cultivable  land,  more  coal,  and  more 
metallic  ores,  than  the  whole  of  Europe;  and  it  abounded  in  rivers 
calculated  for  facilitating  the  passage  of  labor  and  its  products  from 
point  to  point.  What  now  had  become,  in  1856,  the  contribution 
of  this  wonderful  territory,  embracing  a  full  half  of  the  Union,  to 
the  commerce  of  the  world?  Let  us  see!  The  cotton  exported 
amounted  to  3,000,000  bales.  To  this  may  now  be  added  100,000 
hogsheads  of  tobacco,  the  total  money  value  of  the  exports  of  this 
vast  territory  having  been  almost  precisely  $140,000,000 — barely 
sufficient  to  pay  for  the  cargoes  of  five-and-twenty  ships,  of  a  joint 
burden  of  20,000  tons,  laden  with  the  beautiful  fabrics  of  France. 

For  the  carriage  to  market  of  this  cotton  and  tobacco  how  many 
ships  were  required?  Thousands!  How  many  seamen?  Tens  of 
thousands!  Who  paid  them?  The  planters!  Who  paid  the  charges 
on  the  cotton  until  it  reached  its  final  consumer?  The  planter, 
whose  share  of  the  two,  three,  or  five  dollars  a  pound  paid  for  his 
cotton  by  his  customers  in  Brazil,  Australia,  or  California,  amounted 
to  but  a  single  dime.  It  may,  as  I  think,  be  safely  asserted  that  of 
all  people  claiming  to  rank  as  civilized  there  have  been  none  who 
have  retained  for  themselves  so  small  a  portion  of  the  ultimate  prices 
of  their  products  as  have  those  who  have  been  accustomed  to  supply 
raw  cotton  to  Britain  and  to  France. 

The  first  of  all  taxes  is  that  of  transportation,  preceding  as  it  does 
even  the  demands  of  government.  Of  this  the  Frenchman  pays 
almost  literally  none,  the  commodities,  taste  and  skill,  which  mainly 
be  exports,  being  to  be  classed  among  the  imponderables.  The 
planter,  on  the  contrary,  gives  nine-tenths  of  the  ultimate  prices 
of  his  products  as  his  portion  of  this  terrific  tax,  doing  so  for 
the  reason  that  he  is  always  exporting,  in  the  forms  of  cotton  and 
tobacco,  the  weighty  food  of  mere  brute  labor,  and  the  most  valu- 
able portions  of  the  soil  upon  which  that  labor  had  been  expended. 

Throughout  the  world,  as  here  among  ourselves,  the  exporters  of 
raw  produce  pay  all  the  taxes  incident  to  a  separation  of  consumers 
from  producers,  the  manufacturing  nations  profiting  by  their  col- 
lection. Hence  it  is  that  while  the  former  tend  from  year  to  year 
to  become  more  dependent,  the  latter  tend  equally  to  become  more 
independent,  thus  furnishing  conclusive  evidence  of  growing  civili- 
zation. 

The  protected  Frenchman,  freed  from  the  most  oppressive  of  all 
taxes,  grows  in  love  of  the  beautiful,  in  love  of  freedom,  in  that  love 
of  his  native  land  by  which  he  is  everywhere  so  much  distinguished 
— each  and  every  stage  of  progress  marking  growth  of  real  civiliza- 
tion. 

The  unprotected  men  of  the  South,  on  the  contrary,  have  been  so 
heavily  taxed  on  the  road  to  their  ultimate  market  as  to  have  pro- 


10 

duced  a  constantly  growing  need  for  abandoning  their  exhausted 
lands,  and  a  corresponding  growth  of  belief  in  human  slavery,  which 
is  but  another  word  for  barbarism. 

Since  the  date  above  referred  to,  France  and  the  South  have  passed 
through  very  destructive  wars,  but  how  widely  different  is  their 
present  condition  ;  the  one  being  more  prosperous  than  ever  before, 
the  other  remaining  now  so  much  impoverished  as  to  excite  the 
sympathy  even  of  those  Avho  had  most  execrated  the  men  and 
measures  to  which  the  rebellion  had  been  due. 

Such,  Mr.  Editor,  have  been  the  results  of  thorough  protection 
on  one  side  of  the  ocean  and  an  absence  of  protection  on  the  other. 
Choose  between  them! 

In  another  letter  I  shall  submit  to  your  consideration  a  compara- 
tive view  of  the  present  commercial  position  of  France  and  Britain, 
meanwhile  remaining, 

Yours,  respectfully, 

HENBY  C.  CAEEY. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  17,  1876. 


LETTEE  THIED. 

The  strong  man,  Mr.  Editor,  self-reliant,  moves  boldly  forward, 
careless  of  the  comments  of  those  around  him,  and  confident  in  his 
power  for  self-defence.  His  feeble  rival,  full  of  doubts  and  fears, 
watches  anxiously,  hoping  to  maintain  his  position  yet  hesitating 
as  regards  his  power  so  to  do.  In  which  of  these  men  may  we  find 
the  prototype  of  France  commercially  considered?  In  which  that 
of  Britain?     Let  us  see! 

In  the  sixty  years  that  have  passed  since  the  close  of  the  great 
war,  France  has,  as  I  believe,  never  once  attempted  to  interfere  in 
our  affairs;  nor,  so  far  as  I  can  recollect,  have  the  French  people 
sought  in  any  manner  to  influence  our  legislation.  She  and  they 
have  been  content  to  allow  us  to  determine  for  ourselves  our  com- 
mercial arrangements,  confident  that,  whatsoever  might  be  their 
form,  French  skill  and  taste  would  so  far  triumph  over  such  obsta- 
as  Dii'jht  be  raised  as  to  enable  France  to  participate  in  sup- 
plying tin-  great  market  the  Union  now  presents. 

Widely  different  from  this,  British  interference  has  been  persis- 
tent throughout  this  whole  period,  increasing  in  its  force  as  the 
danger  to  British  interests  became  more  clearly  obvious.  On  one 
occasion,  some  five  and  twenty  years  since,  your  then  minister 
had  tin;  bad  taste,  if  not  even  the  impertinence,  to  send  to  our 
Department  a  lecture  on  the  folly  of  protection,  accompanied 
by  a  strong  remonstrance  against  increase  in  the  duties  on  British 
iron.  Of  the  course  that  has  been  since  pursued  some  idea  may  be 
formed  after  a  study  of  the  exhibit,  made  in  a  document  herewith 
of  the  discreditable  proceedings  of  the  Canadian  Commissioner 
in  reference  to  that,  so-called,  Beciproeity  Treaty  whose  adoption  he 


11 

then  was  urging;  these  things  having  been  done  under  the  eye, 
and,  as  we  have  every  reason  to  believe,  with  the  sanetion  of  the 
minister  under  whose  roof  the  commissioner  was  then  residing. 
The  corruption  then  and  there  practised  may  be  taken  as  the  type 
oF  the  whole  British  action  in  this  country  ;  agents  being  sent  oat 
to  lecture  on  the  advantages  of  free  trade;  journalistic  correspon- 
dents being  purchased;  Cobden  Club  publications  being  gratuitously 
distributed;  and  our  domestic  affairs  being  in  every  possible  man- 
ner interfered  with;  with  simply  the  effeet  of  proving  that  there 
reigns  abroad  great  fear  that  the  Union  may  speedily  achieve  an 
industrial  independence  and  thus  emancipate  itself  from  the  system 
described  more  than  a  century  since  by  Joshua  Gee  when  assuring 
his  countrymen  that  more  than  three-fourths  of  the  products  of  these 
colonies  were  absorbed  by  British  traders,  and  that  the  share  allowed 
to  the  colonists  scarcely  sufficed  to  purchase  clothing  for  their  fami- 
lies and  themselves. 

Turn  now,  Mr.  Editor,  to  your  own  journal  of  the  25th  alt.,  and 
re-read  the  inquiry  there  made  as  to  "what  possible  outlet  we  can 
have  for  our  produce  in  the  event  of  such  an  important  purchaser 
being  lost  to  us  permanently;"  following  this  up  by  study  of  your 
answer  to  the  effect,  that  "the  high  tariff  so  long  maintained  by 
the  United  States  has  at  length  brought  her  producing  powers  up 
to  her  requirements,"  and  that,  therefore,  "we  cannot  but  great!}' 
fear  that  the  crisis  of  depression  is  by  no  means  past,  and  it  is  not 
improbable  that  the  list  of  works  that  have  to.be  closed  for  want 
of  orders  will  be  augmented,  and  many  more  workmen  be  thrown 
out  of  employment  before  the  year  is  out."  Turn  next  to  your 
report  of  the  Address  of  the  President  of  the  Sheffield  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  and  find  him  admitting  that  although  "they  had  argued 
during  the  term  of  the  free  trade  agitation  that  protected  industries 
failed,  that  the  quality  deteriorated,  and  the  enterprising  manufac- 
turers began  to  stagnate,  that  did  not  seem  to  apply  to  American 
manufacturers;"  the  general  result  at  which  the  speaker  had  arrived 
being  precisely  that  which  you  yourself  had  just  before  suggested, 
to  wit,  that  the  American  market  had  been  lost,  and  had  been  so 
because  of  a  protective  tariff  such  as  you  have  now  denounced. 

Turn  further,  if  you  please,  to  your  report,  a  part  of  which  is  here 
below  given,  of  the  proceedings  of  a  meeting  of  the  Manchester 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  now  but  a  fortnight  old,  and  mark,  first, 
the  alarm  excited  by  the  recent  and  rapid  growth  of  the  cotton 
manufacture  of  India;  and,  second,  the  admission  there  made  that 
the  duty,  trivial  as  it  is,  is  "a  great  grievance  to  Manchester,"  paid, 
as  it  is  here  admitted  to  be,  by  the  British  producer,  and  not  by  the 
Hindoo  consumer: — 

'•Mr.  W.  E.  Taylor,  Enfield,  strongly  condemned  the  Indian  import  duties  upon 
cotton*,  and  attributed  the  delay  in  their  abolition  to  the  influence  of  Lord  North- 
brook,  with  respeot  to  whom  he  said  that,  whatever  the  causes  of  his  retirement,  they 
would  hail  the  consequences  with  satisfaction. 

"  Mr.  J.  A.  Bremner  also  supported  the  resolution,  and  especially  commended  the 
action  of  the  Chamber  with  respect  to  the  cotton  import  duties.  He  said  that  the 
£750,000  raised  by  means  of  these  duties  in  India  fell  upon  80,000  employers  and 
work  people  in  Lancashire,  its  average  incidence  being  at  the  rate  of  jL'10  per  head." 


12 

Had  these  gentlemen  been  talking  in  those  Washington  com- 
mittee rooms  which  their  representatives  so  constantly,  and  so  im- 
pudently,, invade,  or  through  our  public  journals,  they  would  have 
insisted  that  it  was  the  poor  consumer  who  paid  the  duty,  but  here, 
among  themselves,  they  admit  what  they  and  we  know  to  be  the 
fact,  that  it  is  they  who  pay  and  they  who  are  to  be  benefited  by  its 
abolition. 

Look  next  to  the  Cobden  Club,  a  body  of  English  gentlemen, 
and  see  it,  as  we  are  now  assured  may  be  done,  in  defiance  of  your 
own  denunciation  of  the  document  as  unworthy  of  credit,  scatter- 
ing broadcast  throughout  Italy  a  paper  by  one  of  its  members  who 
claims  to  be  recognized  as  an  American,  every  page  carrying  with 
it  evidence  of  that  gross  misstatement  in  reference  to  the  working 
of  the  protective  policy  in  this  country,  throughout  the  last  dozen 
years,  which  had  led  the  Times  to  its  repudiation. 

Allow  me  now,  Mr.  Editor,  to  ask  if  there  can  be  better  evidence 
of  weakness  than  that  which  is  above  exhibited?  Strong  men  can 
always  afford  to  speak  the  truth.  Weak  ones  only  find  themselves 
compelled  to  resort  to  falsehood. 

Turn  back  a  few  months  and  study  for  yourself  the  facts  con- 
nected with  the  urgent  request  made  to  M.  Chevalier  when  last 
in  England,  to  the  effect  that  he  should  urge  upon  his  government 
some  relaxation  of  that  protection  of  the  sugar  manufacture  by  aid 
of  which  French  refiners  were  driving'those  of  Britain  out  of  their 
own  markets;  continental  beet  growers  meanwhile  threatening  an- 
nihilation of  the  cane  growers  of  Britain's  tropical  possessions. 
Turn  next  to  a  file  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  and  study  the  exhibit 
there  made,  but  few  weeks  since,  of  the  trepidation  caused  by  the 
suggestion  that  Austria  had  determined  upon  the  adoption  of  specific 
duties,  thereby  putting  your  shoddy  cloth  and  cinder  iron  upon  a 
level  with  the  more  honest  products  of  Germany  and  of  France. 
Tui'ii  to  the  Economist,  the  Manchester  Guardian,  and  other  journals, 
and  see  how  great  had  been  the  alarm  excited  by  the  statement  that 
Italy  was  surely  bent  upon  "a  complete  return  to  the  protectionist 
system."  Look  next  to  the  joy  that  has  been  since  expressed  on 
receiving  an  assurance  from  the  Commissioner  that  what  was  being 
sought  was  merely  increase  of  revenue  without  reference  to  protec- 
tion. Had  Signor  Luzzati  been  further  interrogated  the  rapturous 
feeling  would,  however,  have  been  greatly  modified  by  his  assurance 
to  the  effect  that  his  government  had  arrived  at  the  conclusions,  that 
for  the  suppression  of  brigandage  it  was  indispensable  that  employ- 
:  should  be  found  for  the  Italian  people;  that  for  attaining  this 
result  it  was  needed  that  employments  should  be  diversified;  and 
that,  to  that  end  there  should  he  such  an  increase  of  duties  as  would 
at  one  ;ind  the  same  time  give  both  revenue  and  protection. 

Look   further  in  what  direction  we  may  we  meet  with   evide: 
of  a  nervous  feeling  of  apprehension  singularly  corroborative  of  tin- 
view.-  of  the  great  father  of  economic  science  when  cautioning  his 
fellow  citizens  against  the  dangers   and   difficulties  that  must  inevi- 
tahly  result  from  an  almost  entire  dependence  on  the  foreign  trade. 


13 

Referring  now  to  one  of  the  many  reports  which  British  min- 
isters are  required  to  make,  each  and  all  proving  the  existence  of 
great  anxiety  as  to  the  future,  allow  me  to  ask  your  attention  to 
thai  of  Mr.  Phipps,  your  representative  in  Madrid,  in  which  he  .so 
clearly  shows  how  almost  marvellous  has  been  the  growth  of  the 
foreign  commerce  of  Spain  consequent  upon  the  adoption,  some 
thirty  years  since,  of  a  protective  system  by  aid  of  which  an  import 
of  cotton,  dye-stuffs,  and  other  raw  materials,  had  been  substituted 
for  that  of  cloth  and  other  manufactures.  That  done,  Mr.  Editor, 
mark  the  astonishment,  if  not  even  the  horror,  he  expresses  at  the 
rapid  growth  of  the  protective  feeling  ;  at  the  action  of  the  govern- 
ment in  refusing  reduction  of  existing  duties;  and  especially  at 
the  "  shortsighted  and  suicidal"  measures  now  likely  to  be  adopted 
with  a  view  to  bringing  about  those  harmonious  relations  between 
agriculture  and  manufactures  which  were  held  by  Adam  Smith  in 
such  high  regard. 

Passing  northward  and  eastward  mark  if  you  please,  the  alarm 
that  has  been  caused  by  reason  of  the  belief  that  Russian  road  mak- 
ing must  lead  to  absorption  of  the  trade  of  Central  Asia  by  Russian 
manufacturers. 

Study  then  the  causes  of  the  destructive  and  useless  war  of  the 
Crimea,  followed,  as  it  has  been,  by  almost  endless  negotiations  in 
regard  to  Turkey  and  to  Egypt  and  its  canal,  all  tending  to  prove 
an  anxiety  in  reference  to  the  commercial  future  from  which  France 
seems  so  almost  entirely  exempt. 

Proposing  in  my  next  to  call  your  attention  to  the  comparative 
movements  of  France  and  Britain,  I  remain,  etc, 

HENRY  C.  CAREY. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  18,  1876. 


LETTER  FOURTH. 

The  change  of  Mr.  Quskisson's  opinions  in  regard  to  protection 
followed  so  closely  on  large  increase  in  the  duties  on  foreign  iron 
and  other  commodities,  that  it  was,  as  I  think,  but  six  years  later 
in  date.  Four  years  still  later  came  the  French  Revolution  of  1830, 
and  by  that  time  the  slight  changes  which  had  followed  his  conver- 
sion may  be  supposed  to  have  begun  to  produce  the  effect  desired. 
Taking  that  year,  then,  as  the  starting  point  of  a  comparison  of  the 
working  of  protection  in  France,  and  free  trade  in  Britain,  we  ob- 
tain results  which  will  now  be  given,  as  follows: — 

In  that  year  the  French  domestic  exports  amounted,  in  round 
numbers,  to  $100,000,000,  or  little  more  than  $3  per  head  of  the 
population.  Thirty  years  later,  at  the  date  of  the  Cobden  treaty, 
under  a  prohibitive  system,  they  had  grown  to  $400,000,000,  or 
about  ^11   per    head.     Since    the   close  of  the   German   war   their 


14 

growth,  under  a  highly  protective  one,  in  millions  of  dollars,  has 
been  as  follows: — 

1871  .        .         .573  1874     .        .        .774 

1872  .         .        .736  1875     .        .        .     800* 

1873  .         .         .760 

The  population  for  1872,  Alsace  and  Loraine  having  passed  to 
Germany,  was  in  round  numbers  36,000,000,  and  an  export  of 
800,000,000  gives  $22  per  head,  or  seven  times  more  than  that  of 
1830.  Seeing  this  wonderful  upward  and  onward  progress  in  face 
of  the  general  depression  that  now  prevails,  an  English  journalist 
has  recently  told  his  readers  that  France  seemed  to  bear  "  a 
charmed  life."  He  failed,  however,  to  say  to  them  that  the  charm 
would  be  found  in  the  fact  that  for  eighty  years  the  French  policy 
had  looked  steadily  in  the  direction  of  development  of  that  domestic 
commerce  which  now  constitutes  the  foundation  of  her  great  and 
rapidly  growing  foreign  commerce.  Scarcely  knowing  it,  France 
has  been  a  consistent  disciple  of  Adam  Smith. 

The  declared  value  of  "  British  produce  and  manufactures"  ex- 
ported in  1830,  was,  in  round  numbers,  $190,000,000,  or  about  $8 
per  head;  being  almost  thrice  that  of  France.  That  of  the  last  five 
years  lias  been,  as  here  given  in  millions  of  dollars:  — 

1871  .         .         .     1115  1874     .        .        .     1200 

1872  .        .         .     1280  1875     .         .        .     1150 

1873  .         .        .     1275 

these  last  figures  giving  about  $34  per  head  of  the  population; 
or  but  about  50  per  cent,  in  excess  of  the  exports  of  France. 
It  thus  appears  that  under  a  thoroughly  protective  system  the 
foreign  commerce  of  this  latter  has  grown  with  such  rapidity  that 
whereas  in  1830  it  stood  to  that  of  Britain  as  little  more  than 
1  to  3 ;  it  now  stands  as  2  to  3. 

Were  even  this  apparent  difference  a  real  one,  the  change  would 
still  be  most  extraordinary,  in  view  of  the  facts,  that,  whereas  France, 
in  losing  her  Rhine  provinces,  had  lost  more  than  she  had  gained 
in  Algeria  or  elsewliere,  Britain  had  not  only  added  in  India,  Aus- 
tralia, South  Africa,  and  other  of  her  dependencies,  more  than 
100,000,000  to  her  population,  but  had  so  subjugated  the  hundreds 
of  millions  of  Japan,  China,  and  other  Eastern  States,  as  to  luive 
compelled  them  to  add  largely  to  the  markets  for  her  products 
which  she  had  before  controlled. 

That  it  is  not,  however,  a  real  difference  will  now  be  shown,  as 
follows: — 

The  farmer  who  has  sold  his  crops  has  at  his  command,  for  any 
and  every  purpose,  the  whole  amount  they  had  produced.  His 
neighbor,  tin;  .shopkeeper,  having  sold  a  similar  amount,  has  only 
hi    profits,  having  at  his  command  but  a   tenth  or  an  eighth  of  the 

*  The  last  account  I  have  Been  showed  a  considerable  increase  on  ls74,  but  as  yet 
I  have  Been  do  definite  flgureu  for  the  yean 


15 

amount  of  sales.     That  the  two  men  thus  described  are  the  proto- 
types of  France  and  Britain  will  now  be  shown,  as  follows  : — 

At  the  first  of  the  periods  above  referred  to,  both  France  and 
Britain  sold  mainly  the  produce  of  their  own  land,  and  so  it  still 
continues  with  the  former;  the  foreign  raw  material  entering  into 
her  domestic  exports  not  exceeding,  probably,  an  eighth  of  their 
gross  amount.  At  that  date  Britain  bought  her  cotton,  but  she  not 
only  sold  her  own  flax  and  her  own  wool,  but  with  the  products  of 
her  soil  she  fed  the  people  employed  in  converting  them  into  the 
fabrics  required  in  distant  markets.  Now,  all  is  different.  Nearly, 
if  not  quite,  every  pound  of  raw  material — silk,  flax,  hemp,  jute, 
wool,  cotton — entering  into  the  composition  of  the  textiles  ex- 
ported has  been  brought  from  distant  lands,  to  be  paid  for  to 
foreign  farmers  and  planters,  and  not,  as  in  France,  to  her  own 
people.  So,  too,  with  the  wheat,  the  cheese,  the  eggs,  the  poultry, 
and  other  food  consumed  by  the  men  who  work  up  such  materials. 
Seeing  all  this,  Mr.  Editor,  may  we  not  assume  that  a  full  half  of 
what  is  given  to  the  world  as  exports  of  "British  produce  and 
manufactures,"  is  really  but  a  re-export  of  the  products  of  other 
lands  Avhose  people  claim  the  proceeds,  minus  the  enormous 
charges  made  for  the  work  of  manufacture  and  exchange?  Can  it 
then  safely  be  asserted  that  the  real  domestic  export  of  Britain 
exceeds,  if  indeed  it  equals,  that  of  France?  It  certainly  seems 
to  me  that  it  cannot. 

The  policies  of  the  two  countries  and  their  results  having  been 
so  widely  different,  we  may  now  look  to  the  changes  that,  under 
their  influence,  have  been  brought  about  in  the  condition,  material 
and  moral,  of  their  respective  populations. 

At  the  opening  of  the  French  devolution  the  condition  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  people  of  France,  as  has  been  already  stated,  was 
nearly  akin  to  that  of  serfdom.  To-day  we  have  the  assurance  of 
your  countryman  Mr.  Thornton,  made  after  a  very  thorough  exami- 
nation of  the  subject,  that  their  condition  compares  advantageously 
with  that  of  those  of  the  most  favored  countries  of  the  world;  and 
that  to  all  appearance  the  prosperity  now  so  generally  evident  must 
continue  and  increase.  So  much  for  a  system  that,  in  harmony  with 
the  ideas  of  Adam  Smith,  has  looked  to  development  of  the  domestic 
commerce,  and  has  been  carried  into  effect  in  despite  of  a  warlike 
policy  that  has  not  only  annihilated  millions  of  men  and  thousands 
of  millions  of  property,  but  has  also  thrice  subjected  the  country 
to  invasions,  and  thrice  to  heavy  taxation  for  the  maintenance  of 
foreign  armies  quartered  upon  it.  The  first  Napoleon  has  told  us 
that  it  was  the  empty  belly  that  caused  revolutions.  May  it  not 
then  be  that  to  the  general  prosperity  indicated  not  only  by  Mr. 
Thornton  but  by  a  thousand  important  facts,  may  be  attributed  the 
extraordinary  quietude  of  the  whole  French  people  while  waiting 
throughout  the  last  four  years  for  institution  of  a  government? 

Looking  now  back  in  British  history,  we  find  the  people  of  Ire- 
land to  have  been  prospering  by  aid  of  a  legislative  independence 
which  had  been  then  secured:  Scotland  to  have  exhibited  tens  of 


16 

thousands  of  tenants  holding,  as  they  supposed,  their  lands  under 
titles  as  secure  as  were  those  of  the  great  landholders  under  whom 
they  held  :  England  exhibiting  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  living 
on  lands  of  their  own,  and  giving  annually  to  the  nation  tens  of 
thousands  of  youths  capable  of  serving,  with  advantage  to  their 
country  and  to  themselves,  in  the  forum  or  the  field,  in  the  work- 
shop or  on  the  farm  ;  and  presenting  as  fine  and  intelligent  a  bodv 
of  men  as  had  ever  been  exhibited  by  any  nation  of  the  world. 
What  now  has  become  of  these  men?  In  Ireland,  says  Thackeray, 
they  have  "  starved  by  millions."  In  Scotland  they  have  been  dis- 
possessed to  make  way  for  sheep  and  deer.  In  England  they  have 
been  replaced  by  farm  laborers  who  have  before  them,  says  an  Edin- 
burgh reviewer,  "  no  future  but  the  poorhouse;"  and  who  exhibit  in 
the  present,  as  but  now  described  by  Mr.  C 1  i ft e  Leslie,  a  general  sad- 
ness and  stupidity,  an  absence  of  intelligence  and  of  energy,  that  can 
with  difficulty  be  paralleled  in  any  nation  whatsoever,  however  bar- 
barous.* Such  has  been  the  result  of  a  century  of  wars  for  trade; 
of  "  warfare"  upon  all  the  nations  of  the  world  for  preventing 
growth  of  that  domestic  commerce  whose  advantages  the  illustrious 
author  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations  so  greatly  desired  to  impress  upon 
his  countrymen. 

The  French  people  furnish  to  the  outer  world  their  own  products 
to  the  amount  of  $700,000,000,  the  proceeds  being  so  distributed 
among  themselves  that  the  little  egg-producing  farmer,  equally 
with  the  great  mining  capitalist,  obtains  the  share  to  which  he 
may  justly  be  deemed  entitled.  As  a  consequence  of  this  the  foun- 
dations of  the  system  become  from  day  to  day  more  Avide  and  deep, 
the  societary  machine  taking  daily  more  and  more  the  stable  form 
of  a  true  pyramid. 

The  bankers  and  traders  of  Britain,  on  the  contrary,  pass  annu- 
ally through  their  hands  property  that  counts  by  thousands  of  mil- 
lions, retaining  for  themselves  so  large  a  share  of  the  profits  that 
but  little  remains  for  those  unfortunate  laborers  who  now  represent 
that  admirable  body  of  small  proprietors  who  in  the  days  of  Adam 
Smith  furnished  the  youths  of  whose  achievements  Britain  now 
so  justly  boasts.  As  a  consequence  of  all  this  the  machine  takes 
daily  more  and  more  the  form  of  an  inverted  pyramid  upon  whose 
future  calculation  can  with  difficulty  be  made 

Compare  now,  Mr.  Editor,  the  two  pictures  that  have  been  pre- 
sented, and  determine  for  yourself  if  men  should  not  be  allowed  to 
differ  from  you  in  opinion  without  exposing  themselves  to  the  charges 
of"  imbecility  and  ignorance." 

Turning  our  eyes  now  to  this  western  side  of  the  Atlantic,  allow 
me  to  submit  to  your  consideration  some  important  facts,  as  fol- 
lows:— 

The  cotton  here  converted  into  cloth  in  this  lasl  year  has  amounted 
to  no  less  than  lino. oiiiijOiio  pounds.     Of  the  (doth  produced  the  cx- 

Thia  is  taken  from  a  quotation  in  the  Journal  </<.-.-  Economistes  for  last  month. 
The  original  I  have  not  seen. 


17 

port  was  small,  and  so  was  the  import  of  foreign  cottons,  the  balance 
either  way  being  unimportant.  The  consumption  by  our  own  43 
millions  of  people  may  therefore  be  taken  at  600  millions,  giving  14 
pounds,  or  an  average  of  probably  50  yards,  for  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  in  the  Union;  that,  too,  in  a  time  of  serious  commercial 
crisis.  So  much,  Mr.  Editor,  for  bringing  consumers  and  producers 
into  near  connection  with  each  other. 

The  quantity  of  cotton  simultaneously  worked  up  in  Britain  for 
the  supply  of  her  own  33  millions  of  people,  and  for  the  thousand 
millions  of  the  world  at  large,  was  but  little  more  than  double  the 
quantity  here  actually  consumed,  say  1224  millions  of  pounds;  the 
power  of  consumption  being  everywhere  limited  by  reason  of  the 
enormous  taxes  required  to  be  paid  on  the  road  between  Carolina, 
Brazil,  and  other  cotton  producing  countries  on  one  hand,  and  the 
various  cotton  consuming  countries  on  the  other 

Of  all  tests  of  the  growth  of  wealth  and  civilization  the  most 
certain  is  that  which  is  found  in  the  power  of  a  people  for  the  pro- 
duction and  consumption  of  iron.  Subjecting  the  Union  to  this 
test  we  obtain  the  following  results,  to  wit: — 

In  the  so-called  free  trade  period  which  closed   in 
1824,  the  consumption  of  foreign  and  domestic 

iron  was,  per  head,  in  pounds       ....  35 

Under  protection  it  rose  in  1835  to  .         .         .         .  48 

Under  a  free  trade  system  it  fell  in  1842  to               .  38 

Under  protection  it  rose  in  1847-8  to                .         .  98 

Under  free  trade  it  fell  in  1858-60  to  80 
Under  the  present  moderate  protection  it  has  now 

risen  to  more'  than         ......  150 

The  capacity  of  now  existing  furnaces  is  that  of  five  and  a  half 
millions  of  tons,  or  280  pounds  per  head. 

Of  mineral  oils  our  contribution  to  the  commerce  of  the  world 
counts  almost,  even  if  not  quite,  by  thousands  of  millions  of  gallons, 
little,  if  any,  of  which  would  ever  have  come  to  the  light  but  for 
close  proximity  of  the  machine  shops  of  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati,  and 
Cleveland.  Those  shops  are  as  much  the  offsprings  of  protection 
as  is  the  cotton  trade  of  Russia,  or  of  the  New  England  States. 

Allow  me  now,  Mr.  Editor,  to  call  your  attention  to  an  article 
of  your  own  this  day  received,  in  which  are  given  figures  repre- 
senting the  trade  of  Britain  with  the  nations  that  more  or  less 
protect  their  various  industries,  proving  conclusively,  as  you  there 
have  said,  "  that  the  countries  which  set  the  greatest  opposition  to 
our  iron  industry  are  those  from  which  we  purchase  most  largely;" 
a  state  of  things  which  you  regard  as  greatly  to  be  deplored.  Does 
this  not,  however,  prove  that  the  countries  which,  in  accordance 
with  the  advice  of  Adam  Smith,  look  most  carefully  to  the  pro- 
motion of  their  domestic  commerce  are  precisely  those  which  find 
themselves  enabled  to  contribute  most  to  the  commerce  of  the  world 
at  large  ? 

For  an  answer  to  this  question  look  to  the  report  of  your  min- 
2 


18 

ister  in  Spain  above  referred  to.  For  farther  answer  look  to  the 
figures  here  below  given  representing  our  domestic  exports,  and 
satisfy  yourself  that  it  is  precisely  as  we  make  our  own  iron,  and  our 
own  cottons  and  woollens,  we  are  enabled  to  become  larger  customers 
to  the  various  non-manufacturing  nations  of  the  earth. 

In  the  fourteen  free  trade  years  ending  in  1860  their  amount  was 
$3,400,000,000.  In  the  fourteen  years  of  protection  that  have  just 
now  closed  it  was  $6,600,000,000.  The  last  three  free  trade  years 
gave  a  total  of  $920,000,000.  The  last  three  of  the  protectionist 
years  give  $1,985,000,000,  being  more  than  100  per  cent,  increase 
accompanied  by  a  growth  of  population  not  probably  exceeding  40 
per  cent. 

Seeing  how  fully  both  American  and  French  facts  tend  to  prove 
the  accuracy  of  the  idea  you  have  now  propounded,  to  the  effect 
that  it  is  the  countries  which  "  set  the  greatest  opposition"  to 
your  iron  industries  that  find  themselves  enabled  to  furnish  you 
most  largely  with  the  things  you  need,  may  you,  Mr.  Editor,  not 
find  in  this  important  fact  some  reason  for  revising  the  opinions 
you  have  "for  thirty  years"  so  freely  expressed  in  regard  to  the 
"folly  and  iniquity"  of  the  system  advocated  by  those  who,  like 
myself,  hold  to.  a  firm  belief  in  the  teachings  of  that  greatest  of 
economists,  the  illustrious  author  of  the  Wealth  of  ATalions? 

Respectfully  submitting  this  question  to  your  careful  considera- 
tion, 1  remain 

Your  obedient  servant, 

HENRY  C.  CAREY. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  22,  1S76. 


LETTER  FIFTH. 

Having  thus,  for  the  present  at  least,  disposed  of  the  material 
side  of  the  question  now  before  us,  I  have  here  to  ask  your  atten- 
tion to  the  moral  one,  as  follows: — 

Early  in  the  free-trade  crusade  it  was  announced  in  Parliament 
that  the  smuggler  was  to  be  regarded  as  "the  great  reformer  of  the 
age,"  and  from  that  hour  to  the  present  all  the  aid  in  the  power  of 
that  body  to  give  him  has  been  rendered  ;  Gibraltar,  Malta,  Nova 
Scotia,  Canada,  and  other  possessions,  having  been  chiefly  valued 
for  the  facilities  they  have  afforded  for  setting  at  defiance  the  laws 
of  nations  with  which  Britain  has  professed  to  be  at  peace.  It  is, 
however,  to  a  larger  field,  that  of  Eastern  Asia,  Mr.  Editor,  that  I 
now  invite  your  attention,  to  the  end  that  you  may  be  enabled 
fully  t<>  appreciate  the  manner  in  which  the  "great  reformer"  has 
done  and  is  now  doing  his  appointed  work. 

Prior  to  the  close  of  the  last  century,  the  Chinese  government 
had  been  accustomed  to  regard  opium  as  a  mere  medicine  whose 


19 

use  was  beneficial  rather  than  otherwise.  Eminent  and  observing 
men,  however,  having  remarked  a  steady  increase  in  its  consump- 
tion and  very  injurious  consequences  thence  resulting,  the  matter 
was  brought  to  the  emperor's  notice,  with  the  effect  of  inducing 
him,  in  the  first  year  of  the  present  century,  to  issue  a  proclamation 
absolutely  forbidding  its  import,  and  ordering  the  infliction  of 
heavy  penalties  upon  such  as  might  be  led  to  act  in  violation  of 
the  law.  Nevertheless,  despite  every  effort  at  its  enforcement, 
smuggling  steadily  increased  until,  as  early  as  1824,  it  had  attained 
a  value  of  $8,000,000. 

Nine  years  later,  in  1833,  the  East  India  Company's  charter  was 
renewed,  an  express  understanding  having  first  been  arrived  at  that 
opium  smuggling  should  not  in  any  manner  be  interfered  with,  the 
home  government  thus  making  itself  responsible  for  all  the  in- 
famies attendant  upon  a  trade  since  described  by  the  editor  of  the 
Friend  of  India  as  follows  : — 

"  All  the  iniquities  of  bribery,  fraud,  perjury,  and  violence,  which  are  inseparably 
connected  with  smuggling,  are  practised  ;  and,  occasionally,  bloody  collisions  occur 
between  them  and  the  native  authorities.  Sometimes,  with  a  perfect  understanding 
on  both  sides,  a  sham  fight  is  got  up  between  the  smugglers  and  mandarins,  in  order 
to  display  greater  vigilance  and  activity,  thereby  deceiving  the  government  agents." 

Thus  sanctioned  by  the  royal  head  of  the  English  Church,  and 
by  those  of  its  illustrious  members  who  then  filled  high  positions 
in  his  government,  the  trade  moved  forward  with  great  rapidity, 
the  export  of  1837  amounting  to  40,000  chests  and  making  a  demand 
on  China  for  no  less  than  £25,000,000,  or  thrice  that  made  but 
thirteen  years  before.  Alarmed  at  this,  the  emperor's  councillors 
were  urgent  with  him  to  sanction  domestic  cultivation  of  the  poppy 
and  thus  stop  a  demand  that  was  draining  the  country  of  all  the 
silver  at  its  command.  To  this  his  answer  was  given  in  the 
memorable  words  that  follow,  to  wit :  "It  is  true,"  said  he,  "I 
cannot  prevent  the  introduction  of  the  flowing  poison;  gain-seeking 
and  corrupt  men  will,  for  profit  and  sensuality,  defeat  my  wishes; 
BUT  NOTHING  WILL  INDUCE  ME  TO  DERIVE  A  REVENUE  FROM  THE 
VICE  AND  MISERY  OF  MY  PEOPLE." 

So  much  for  a  barbarian  sovereign  for  the  conversion  of  whose 
unenlightened  subjects  to  the  pure  doctrines  of  Christianity  so  much 
anxiety  is  felt  by  many  of  those  eminent  Britons  whose  votes  have 
invariably  been  given  in  behalf  of  the  "great  reformer  of  the  age," 
wheresoever  found;  whether  on  the  shores  of  the  China  seas  or  on 
those  of  these  United  States. 

The  five  and  thirty  years  which  since  have  followed,  present  the 
facts  that  follow,  to  wit: — 

1st.  An  earnest  effort  at  suppression  of  the  trade  by  means  of 
seizure  and  confiscation  of  all  the  opium  that  had  been  introduced 
in  violation  of  the  law.  2d.  A  bombardment  of  Canton  attended 
with  great  destruction  of  propert}'  and  life,  followed  by  a  treaty  by 
which  the  poor  Chinese  were  required  to  pay  $21,000,000  for 
having  been  so  long  compelled  to  submit  to  the  humiliation  of 
being    plundered    and    maltreated    by   the   "great  reformer;"  and 


20 

further,  to  cede  Hong  Kong,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Canton  River, 
to  the  end  that  it  might  be  used  as  a  smuggling  depot  throughout 
the  future.  3d.  The  war  of  1857,  so  entirely  unprovoked  on 
the  part  of  the  Chinese  government  or  people,  that  it  has  never 
yet,  as  I  think,  found  a  defender  even  in  the  English  press; 
closing,  however,  with  a  treaty  by  the  terms  of  which  the  Chinese 
government,  despite  of  all  remonstrance,  was  compelled  to  legiti- 
mize an  annual  introduction,  counting  by  millions  of  pounds,  of  a 
commodity  that  in  Britain  itself  was  treated  as  a  poison  whose  sale 
was  to  be  subjected  to  close  restriction,  and  to  whose  exclusion  from 
Japan  the  British  government  had  itself  agreed. 

Bad  as  was  all  this,  it  was  scarcely  worse  than  the  injury  and  in- 
sult resulting  from  the  fact,  that  the  empire  was  in  a  great  degree 
thrown  open  to  the  incursions  of  British  agents  and  travellers, 
"manifesting,"  said  Sir  Frederick  Bruce  in  a  dispatch  to  Earl  Rus- 
sell, "an  insolence  and  disregard  to  Chinese  feelings,"  greatly  ex- 
ceeding even  that  which  is  so  usual  with  those  of  them  who  travel 
in  other  countries.  Confirming  this,  Lord  Elgin  tells  his  readers 
that  he  had  seldom  in  the  East  "heard  a  sentence  which  was  re- 
concilable with  the  hypothesis  that  Christianity  had  come  into  the 
world.  Detestation,  contempt,  ferocity,  and  vengeance,"  as  he  con- 
tinues, "whether  Chinamen  or  Indians  be  the  object." 

Unceasing  outrages  provoking  on  the  part  of  the  poor  Chinaman 
occasional  resistance,  we  find  this  but  three  years  later,  in  I860,  made 
the  occasion  of  another  war  in  which  the  rapid  growth  of  civiliza- 
tion was  manifested  in  the  burning  of  the  wonderi'ul  winter  palace, 
and  the  distribution  of  its  treasures,  as  loot,  among  the  captors. 

The  treaty  of  Tientsin  provided  for  its  own  revision  at  a  future 
date,  which  arrived  in  1869.  On  that  occasion  the  Chinese  govern- 
ment was  urgent  for  such  increase  of  duty  upon  opium  as  would 
repress  its  consumption,  and  to  this  the  British  minister  consented  ; 
but  the  home  government,  with  Mr.  Gladstone  at  its  head,  refused 
its  assent,  and  the  duty  remained  unchanged. 

Most  anxious,  the  Chinese  commissioners,  with  Prince  Kung  at 
their  head,  addressed  to  the  minister  a  communication  so  affect- 
ing in  its  appeals  for  mercy  to  be  granted  to  a  great  people  now 
becoming  financially  and  morally  demoralized  by  use  of  a  poison 
the  cost  of  which  to  the  ultimate  consumers  can  scarcely  be  less  t  hail 
$200,000,000,  that  I  am  induced  to  ask  your  attention  to  a  portion 
of  it  here  given,  as  follows: — 

"From  Tsungli  Yamen  to  Sir  R.  Alcock,  July,  18(!t).  The  writers  have,  ou  several 
occasions,  wheq  conversing  with  hi*  excellency  the  British  Minister,  referred  to  the 
opium  trade  as  being  prejudicial  to  the  general  interests  of  commerce.  The  object  of 
the  treaties  between  our  respective  countries  was  to  secure  perpetual  peace,  but  if 
effective  steps  cannot  be  taken  to  remove  an  accumulating  sense  of  injury  from  the 
minds  of  men,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  no  policy  can  obviate  sources  of  future  trouble. 
*  *  *  If  it  be  desired  to  remove  the  very  root,  and  to  stop  the  evil  at  its  source,  no- 
thing  will  be  effective  but  a  prohibition  to  be  enforced  alike  by  both  parties.  Again, 
the  Chinese  merchant  supplies  your  country  with  his  goodly  tea  anil  silk,  conferring 
thereby  a  benefit  upon  her,  but  the  English  merchant  empoisons  China  with  pestilent 
opium.  Smh  conduct  is  unrighteous.  Who  can  justify  it  ?  What  wonder  if  officials 
and  people  say  that  England  is  wilfully  working  out  China's  ruin,  and  has  no  real 


21 

friendly  feeling  for  her?  The  wealth  and  generosity  of  England  is  spoken  of  by  all. 
She  is  anxious  to  prevent  and  anticipate  all  injury  to  her  commercial  interest.  How 
is  it  then  she  can  hesitate  to  remove  an  acknowledged  evil?  Indeed  it  cannot  be 
that  England  still  holds  to  this  evil  business,  earning  the  hatred  of  the  officials  and 
people  of  China,  ami  making  herself  a  reproach  among  the  nations,  because  she  would 
lose  a  little  revenue  were  she  to  forbid  the  cultivation  of  the  poppy!  The  writers 
hope  that  his  excellency  will  memorialize  his  government  to  give  orders  in  India  and 
elsewhere  to  substitute  the  cultivation  of  cereals  or  cotton.  Were  both  nations  to 
rigorously  prohibit  the  growth  of  the  poppy,  both  the  traffic  in  and  the  consumption 
of  opium  might  alike  be  put  an  end  to.  To  do  away  with  so  great  an  evil  would  be 
a  great  virtue  on  England's  part;  she  would  Strengthen  friendly  relations,  and  make 
herself  illustrious.  How  delightful  to  have  so  great  an  act  transmitted  to  after  ages  ! 
This  matter  is  injurious  to  commercial  interests  in  no  ordinary  degree.  If  his  excel- 
Jency  the  British  Minister  cannot,  before  it  is  too  late,  arrange  a  plan  for  a  joint  pro- 
hibition (of  the  traffic),  then  no  matter  with  what  devotedness  the  writers  may  plead, 
they  may  be  unable  to  cause  the  people  to  put  aside  all  ill  feeling,  and  so  strengthen 
friendly  relations  as  to  place  them  for  ever  beyond  fear  of  disturbance.  Day  and 
night,  therefore,  the  writers  give  to  this  matter  most  earnest  thought,  and  overpower- 
ing is  the  distress  which  it  occasions  them.  Having  thus  presumed  to  unbosom 
themselves,  they  would  be  honored  by  his  excellency's  reply." 

Compare,  now,  I  pray  you,  Mr.  Editor,  the  conduct  of  these  barba- 
rians, willing  to  surrender  a  revenue  of  $8,000,000  derivable  from 
the  import  of  opium,  or,  indeed,  to  make  almost  any  other  sacrifice 
in  the  interests  of  humanity,  with  that  of  those  Christian  gentlemen  of 
her  majesty's  council  who,  with  a  certificate  in  their  hand  from  the 
minister  just  then  returned  from  China,  of  his  belief  in  the  absolute 
good  faith  and  sincerity  of  the  Chinese  authorities,  declined  to  make 
any  answer  whatsoever  to  this  solemn  appeal  in  behalf  of  civili- 
zation. 

Almost  simultaneously  with  the  determination  thus  manifested  to 
force  a  great  nation  onward  in  the  course  of  ruin,  that  same  admi- 
nistration was  to  the  last  degree  urgent  in  its  desire  for  a  commis- 
sion by  aid  of  which  it  should  be  enabled  to  obtain,  at  almost  any 
sacrifice,  discharge  from  claims  for  injuries  inflicted  upon  the  Ame- 
rican people  at  a  time  when  it  was  supposed  that,  like  the  Chinese, 
they  were  so  weak  as  to  be  wholly  unable  to  make  resistance;  and 
to  the  end  of  obtaining  such  discharge  an  eminent  diplomatist  was 
sent  across  the  Atlantic  with  assurance  of  his  advance  to  a  mar- 
quisate  in  the  event  of  success  in  his  negotiations.  Simultaneously, 
too,  that  same  administration  looked  on  quietly  while  the  Russian 
emperor  reduced  to  rags  that  treat}'  of  Paris  by  means  of  which 
he  was  meant  to  be  trammelled  in  his  movements  toward  further 
power  in  southern  Europe  and  Asia. 

Having  studied  these  facts,  Mr.  Editor,  you  may,  perhaps,  now 
allow  me  to  ask  the  question  as  to  what  would  be  your  own  opinion 
of  an  able-bodied  man,  in  all  the  vigor  of  life,  whom  you  had  seen 
day  by  day,  week  by  week,  trampling  on  one  older  than  himself, 
and  so  feeble  in  body  and  mind  as  to  be  wholly  unable  to  make  re- 
sistance? 

Still,  further,  what  would  be  your  opinion  of  him  when  you  saw 
him  almost  simultaneously  "booing  and  booing"  to  all  the  men 
stronger  than  himself  by  whom  he  chanced  to  be  surrounded?  My 
own  opinion  I  cannot  here  venture  to  express.  What  it  is,  you 
may,  as  I  think,  very  readily  imagine. 


22 

How  the  atrocious  polic}7  thus  described  is  viewed  by  some  of 
the  right-thinking  among  jour  own  fellow  citizens,  is  shown,  Mr. 
Editor,  in  the  following  passage  from  the  Fortnightly  Review: — 

"  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  speaking  of  the  opium  war  with  China,  once  remarked  that 
'justice  was  on  the  side  of  the  Pagan.'  Never  was  this  more  true  than  at  the 
present  time,  when  a  Pagan  government,  in  spite  of  domestic  anarchy,  of  the  para- 
lyzing influence  of  official  corruption,  and  of  the  perpetual  menace  of  foreign  inter- 
vention, yet  nobly  endeavors  to  exert  what  remains  of  its  shattered  authority  on 
the  side  of  virtue  and  the  good  order  of  the  State.  On  the  other  hand.  I  know  of 
nothing  more  ignoble  than  the  heartless  indifference  with  which  the  failure  of  these 
patriotic  efforts  is  regarded  by  so-called  civilized  nations,  or  the  immoral  cynicism 
with  which  English  statesmen  not  only  excuse  but  justify  our  share  in  entailing 
the  greatest  of  calamities  on  one-third  of  the  human  race.  If  it  were  possible  for 
us  to  escape  from  the  responsibility  which  must  ever  attach  itself  to  the  authors  of 
the  first  Chinese  War;  if  we  could  prove  that,  in  forcing  the  legalization  of  the  opium 
trade  by  the  treaty  of  Tientsin,  we  yielded  to  iron  necessity  ;  if,  moreover,  we  could 
demonstrate  that  our  duty  to  India  compelled  us  to  prefer  the  temporary  exigencies 
of  revenue  to  the  lasting  interests  of  morality — it  would  still  be  incumbent  on  us 
to  face  the  fact  that  our  position  is  at  once  shameful  and  humiliating.  But  when 
we  know  that  the  direct  responsibility  of  every  act  that  has  led  to  the  degradation 
and  rapid  decline  of  the  Chinese  Empire  lies  at  our  own  door,  and  that  the  policy 
which  has  borne  these  evil  fruits  is  still  being,  in  a  great  measure,  carried  out 
by  the  concurrent  action  of  Anglo-Indian  administrators  and  British  statesmen, 
the  ignominy  demands  some  fortitude  for  us  to  bear  it.  We,  however,  do  bear 
it  ;  and,  at  the  same  time,  lose  no  opportunity  of  ministering  to  our  self-love  by 
pretending  that  wherever  English  commerce  extends,  or  English  influence  penetrates, 
both  confer  untold  benefits  upon  the  less  favored  nations  of  the  world." 

So  much  for  the  present,  and  now  for  the  future.  That,  Mr. 
Editor,  you  may  clearly  understand  what  is  the  prospect  as  regards 
action  in  India,  I  submit  for  your  consideration  a  passage  from  the 
Contemporary  Review^  for  the  last  month,  which  reads  as  follows: — 

"The  motives  of  our  Indian  Government,  and  its  policy  with  regard  to  opium,  are 
patent  and  unmistakable.  For  the  purpose  of  maintaining  and  increasing  our  opium 
revenue,  the  government  lias  carefully  studied  the  Chinese  market:  it  has  sent 
messengers  to  China  to  find  out  how  the  trade  might  best  be  advanced.  With  this 
view  it  has  been  proposed  to  direct  a  special  inquiry  as  to  the  possibility  of  extending 
the  cultivation  of  opium  in  the  districts  of  the  northwestern  provinces  :  for  this 
purpose  our  consuls  in  t he  Chinese  ports  regularly  report  on  the  condition  and  pros- 
pects of  the  opium  trade,  and  for  this  purpose  the  Times,  in  February  of  last  year, 
called  attention  to  the  propriety  of  appointing  a  commission  of  inquiry  to  ascertain 
the  probable  results  of  Chinese  competition  with  our  opium  trade.  For  this  purpose 
it  can  hardly  be  doubted  the  Indian  Government  are  anxious  to  open  up  the  trade 
route  through  Burmah,  and  so  to  pour  a  fresh  stream  of  poison  direct  on  the  western 
provinces  of  China.  It  Btanda  confessed  that,  like  prudent  people,  we  take  o 
our  eight  millions  a  year ;  but  whilst  we  do  so  and  maintain  pressure  upon  China, 
We  cannot  deny  that  we  are  the  lineal  successors  of  those  who  waged  the  Opium 
War." 

Saving  most  seriously  demoralized  the  hundreds  of  millions  of 
people  who  could  be  reached  by  means  of  the  rivers  of  the  east,  it 
is  tee.,  as  we  see,  proposed  to  perform  a  work  of  perhaps  similar 
lit,  by  means  <»!'  roads  in  the  west,  and  to  the  end  of  facilitating 
the  movement,  tie;  home  government  would  seem  to  be  preparing 
for  another  war  upon  a.  people  whose  defencelessness  has  been 
so  fully  proved;  Lord  I).. Thy  having,  in  October  last,  told  the 
people  of  Liverpool  that,  "  for  years  past  it  has  seemed  probable  to 
careful  observers  thai  some  collision  of  this  kind  would  take  place. 
U  has  come  at   last,  and  we   must  do  our   best   to  bring  it  to  good 


23 

account,  and  make  it  the  means  of  putting  our  relations  on  a  better 
footing  in  future."  Treading  on  worms  whose  teeth  have  been 
proved  incapable  of  biting,  would  seem,  Mr.  Editor,  to  be  a  very 
profitable  amusement.  That  it  is  not  a  very  unusual  one  on  the 
part  of  your  Christian  government  is  shown  in  an  article  of  your 
own  Fortnightly  Review,  entitled,  "  How  England  makes  and  keeps 
treaties,"  from  which  I  take  a  passage,  now  recommended  to  your 
careful  consideration,  and  which  reads  as  follows: — 

"  In  the  same  way  and  at  the  same  time,  we  have  everywhere  obtained  that  our 
goods  shall  be  imported  into  all  these  countries  at  duties  of  either  three  or  live 
per  cent.  We  are  continuing  to  apply  to  Eastern  nations  this  double  system  of 
tariffs,  and  jurisdiction  of  goods  and  judges.  To  attain  those  ends,  we  use  all  sorts 
of  means,  from  courteous  invitation  to  bombardments.  We  prefer  to  employ  mere 
eloquence,  because  it  is  cheap  and  easy  ;  but  if  talking  fails  we  follow  it  up  by  gun- 
boats, and,  in  that  convincing  way,  we  induce  hesitating  'barbarians'  not  only  to 
accept  our  two  unvarying  conditions,  but  also  to  pay  the  cost  of  the  expedition  by 
which  their  consent  to  these  conditions  was  extorted  from  them.  We  tried  patience 
and  politw  proposals  with  Tunis,  Tripoli,  and  Morocco.  China  was  so  unwilling  to 
listen  to  our  advice,  so  blind  to  the  striking  merits  of  our  opium  and  our  consuls, 
that  we  were  obliged,  with  great  regret,  to  resort  to  gentle  force  with  her.  Japan 
presents  the  most  curious  example  of  the  series ;  it  is  made  up  of  ignorance  circum- 
vented, and  of  indignation  frightened.  Indeed,  if  we  had  space  for  it,  the  story  of 
the  Japan  treaties  would  be  worth  telling,  because  it  is  a  very  special  one,  because 
it  is  the  newest  triumph  of  our  justice  abroad,  and  because  it  may  be  taken  as  in- 
dicative of  our  present  'manner,'  as  painters  say." 

The  "story"  of  Japan,  so  well  "  worth  telling,"  is  this:  — 
A  dozen  years  since  that  country  concluded  treaties  with  Great 
Britain,  France,  and  other  European  powers,  closely  resembling 
that  with  Turkey,  and  those  with  other  Eastern  nations,  by  means 
of  which  they  have  been  so  largely  barbarized,  and  so  generally 
ruined.  Unused  to  treaty  making,  however,  the  Japanese  authori- 
ties wisely  inserted  provisions  by  means  of  which  it  was  supposed 
to  be  secured  that  those  now  made  were  to  be  replaced  by  others  at 
the  close  of  the  first  decade.  That  time  arrived  some  four  years 
since,  and  down  to  the  last  hour  it  was  supposed  that  new  treaties 
would  be  made.  Not  so,  however,  Britain  at  once  asserting  that 
there  eould  be  no  "  revision,"  except  with  the  nonsent  of  both 
parties,  and  that  until  such  consent  should  have  been  obtained  the 
original  treaty  must  remain  in  foree.  EVom  that  time  the  Japanese 
government  has  stood  in  the  position  of  being  compelled  to  submit 
to  all  the  provisions  of  a  treaty  whose  maintenance  cannot  fail  to 
result  in  utter  ruin;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  risk  being  involved  in 
war  with  a  nation  that  has  always  in  the  Eastern  seas  more  vessels 
of  war  than  would  be  required  to  close  at  once  all  that  great  do- 
mestic commerce  now  carried  on  by  means  of  boats  and  ships  be- 
tween the  various  towns  and  cities,  islands  and  provinces  of  the 
empire.  Here,  as  usual  in  all  cases  in  which  Britain  is  interested, 
the  question  is  one  oi'  might  and  not  of  right. 

Sueh,  Mr.  Editor,  is  the  system  against  which  I  have  counselled, 
not  only  for  my  own  country  but  for  all  the  countries  of  the  world, 
that  resistance  which  takes  the  form  of  protection  to  the  farmer  in 
his  efforts  at  bringing  consumers  to  his  side.  Were  you  a  Japanese, 
would  you    not  do  the  same?     Were  Adam   Smith,  an  American, 


24 

would  he  not  be  a  protectionist?  Being  a  Briton,  would  he  not 
say  to  his  fellow  citizens  that  all  their  wars  were  those  of  mere 
"shop-keepers;"  all  idea  of  either  Christianity  or  civilization  being 
made  to  give  way  to  desire  for  the  "almighty  dollar,"  however 
great  the  "folly  and  iniquity"  attendant  upon  its  acquisition? 
Would  he  not  thus  exhibit  himself  to  the  world  as  one  of  that  class 
of  thinkers  which  you  have  just  now  stigmatized  as  composed  of 
ignoramuses  and  imbeciles?     Assuredly  he  would. 

In  another  letter  I  propose  to  furnish  an  exhibit  of  the  results 
obtained  in  India,  meanwhile  remaining 

Yours  respectfully, 

HENRY  C.  CAREY. 

Philadelphia,  March  17,  1876. 


LETTER  SIXTH. 

"  In  the  time  of  its  native  princes,"  says  Mr.  Campbell  in  his 
"Modern  India,"  India  was  a  "paying  country,"  and  that  such  was 
the  fact  is  absolutely  certain.  Their  number  was  great  and  their 
mode  of  living  luxurious  beyond  anything  then  known  in  Europe; 
but  their  people,  profitably  employed,  were  probably  in  the  en- 
joyment of  an  amount  of  comfort  fully  equal  to  what  could  have 
been  then  exhibited  by  any  of  the  communities  of  the  West.  Noav, 
however,  when  that  great  country  has  for  more  than  a  century, 
Mr.  Editor,  been  subjected  to  an  exclusive  British  control,  we  find 
a  picture  widely  different;  the  princes  and  their  magnificence  having 
disappeared,  and  their  palaces  being  occupied  by  mere  clerks  chiefly 
employed  in  gathering  up  the  proceeds  of  a  most  oppressive  taxa- 
tion to  be  thence  transmitted  to  that  "city  of  palaces,"  Calcutta, 
where  sits  enthroned  a  representative  of  Her  Majesty  the  Queen  and 
Empress  seriously  engaged  in  contemplation  of  the  unpleasant  fact, 
that  if  he  would  avoid  public  bankruptcy  he  must  still  further 
misuse  the  power  to  poison  and  demoralize  the  hundreds  of  millions 
of  Chinese  people  to  whom  he  stands  even  now  indebted  for  almost 
a  fourth  of  the  revenue  he  controls,  the  actual  amount  thence 
derived  being  in  the  close  neighborhood  of  $50,000,000.  The 
change  thus  exhibited  is  the  saddest  that  history  anywhere  records. 
To  what  has  it  been  due?     Let  us  see! 

Local  action,  local  combination,  local  expenditure  of  the  proceeds 
of  taxation,  domestic  commerce,  exhibit  themselves  conspicuously 
throughout  Indian  history  down  to  the  commencement  of  the  pre- 
sent century.  If  the  cultivator  contributed  too  large  a  portion  of 
his  grain,  it  was  at  least  consumed  in  a  neighboring  market,  and 
nothing  went  from  off  the  land.  Manufactures,  too,  were  widely 
spread,  and  thus  was  made  demand  for  the  labor  not  required  in 
agriculture.     "On  the  coast  of  Coroinandel,"  said  Orme,*  "and  in 

'    Historical  Fragments,  London,  180.r),  p.  4u!t. 


25 

the  province  of  Bengal,  when  at  some  distance  from  a  high  road  or 
principal  town,  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  village  in  which  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  is  not  employed  in  making  a  piece  of  cloth.  At 
present,"  he  continues,  "  much  the  greatest  part  of  whole  provinces 
are  employed  in  this  single  manufacture."  Its  progress,  as  he  said, 
included  "no  less  than  a  description  of  the  lives  of  half  the  inhabi- 
tants of  llindostan." 

While  employment  was  thus  locally  subdivided  and  neighbor 
was  thus  enabled  to  exchange  with  neighbor,  exchanges  between 
the  producers  of  food,  or  of  salt,  in  one  part  of  the  country,  and  the 
producers  of  cotton  and  manufacturers  of  cloth  in  others,  tended 
to  the  production  of  commerce  with  more  distant  men — whether 
within,  or  without,  the  limits  of  India  itself.  Bengal  was  cele- 
brated for  the  finest  muslins,  the  consumption  of  which  at  Delhi, 
and  in  Northern  India  generally,  was  large;  the  Coromandel  coast 
being  equally  celebrated  for  the  best  chintzes  and  calicoes — leaving 
to  Western  India  the  manufacture  of  strong  and  inferior  goods  of 
every  kind.  Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  no  matter  of  surprise 
that  the  country  was  rich,  and  that  its  people,  though  often  over- 
taxed, and  sometimes  plundered  by  invading  armies,  were  prosper- 
ous in  a  high  degree. 

The  foundation  having  thus  been  laid  in  a  great  domestic  com- 
merce, that  with  the  world  at  large  was  great ;  so  great  that  exchange 
was  then  in  favor  of  India  with  all  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Watt 
and  Arkwright  had  then,  however,  given  to  Britain  those  means  of 
underworking  the  world  which  have  been  since  so  unscrupulously 
used;  and  the  monopoly  thereof  had  been  established  by  means  of 
prohibition  of  the  export  not  only  of  machinery  itself,  but  of  all  the 
artisans  by  whom  machines  might  possibly  be  made.  To  this  was 
now,  1813,  added  the  imposition  of  heavy  duties  on  the  import 
of  India  cottons,  coupled  with  a  prohibition  of  duties  of  any  kind  ou 
English  cottons  imported  into  India.  We  have  thus  presented  to 
us  a  course  of  proceeding  the  "  folly  and  iniquity"  of  which  are 
without  precedent  in  the  world's  histor}' ;  yet  was  it  carried  into  so 
full  effect  that  when  Bishop  lleber,  a  dozen  or  more  years  later, 
had  occasion  to  visit  the  site  of  that  great  city  of  Ducca,  which  had 
been  accustomed  to  supply  the  courts  of  Asia  and  of  Europe  with 
tissues  so  delicate  as  to  be  likened  to  "woven  air,"  he  found  it  a 
mass  of  jungle  given  up  to  the  tiger  and  the  elephant;  as  in  fact  was 
more  or  less  the  case  with  all  other  of  the  manufacturing  cities  of 
what  had  till  recently  been  regarded  as  the  greatest  of  the  empires 
of  the  world.  As  a  consequence  of  this  unhappy  state  of  affairs, 
there  went  up  soon  after  to  the  Sovereign,  the  Parliament,  and  the 
people  of  Britain,  a  memorial  so  sad  as  worthy  to  be  placed  now 
side  by  side  with  that  of  Prince  Kung  and  his  fellow  councillors; 
its  simple  prayer  being  that,  as  British  subjects,  they  might  be 
placed  on  equal  footing  with  other  Britons,  paying  duties  as  they 
paid,  neither  more  nor  less.  Then,  as  now,  however,  they  appealed 
to  hearts  of  stone — traders'  hearts — their  modest  prayer  receiving 
no  attention  whatsoever,  and  the  work  of  annihilation  going  steadily 


26 

forward  until  the  cotton  manufacture  had  disappeared  throughout 
all  that  great  region  of  country  extending  from  "Bombay  to  Bok- 
hara, from  Smyrna  to  Samarcand,"  with  "a  ruin,"  said  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  "without  parallel  in  the  annals  of  commerce." 

The  demand  for  labor  now  so  far  disappeared  that  Mr.  Chapman 
in  his  "Commerce  and  Cotton  in  India,"  an  ardent  admirer  of  the 
system  to  which  that  effect  had  been  due,  was  led,  some  five  and 
twenty  years  since,  to  speak  to  his  British  fellow  citizens  in  the 
words  that  follow  :  — 

"  A  great  part  of  the  time  of  the  laboring  population  in  India  is  spent  in  idleness. 
I  don*t  say  this  to  blame  them  in  the  smallest  degree.  Without  the  means  of 
exporting  heavy  and  crude  surplus  agricultural  produce,  and  with  scanty  means, 
whether  of  capital,  science,  or  manual  skill,  for  elaborating  on  the  spot  articles 
fitted  to  induce  a  higher  state  of  enjoyment  and  of  industry  in  the  mass  of  the  people, 
they  have  really  no  inducement  to  exertion  beyond  that  which  is  necessary  to  gratify 
their  present  and  very  limited  wishes:  those  wishes  are  unnaturally  low,  inasmuch 
as  they  do  not  afford  the  needful  stimulus  to  the  exercise  requisite  to  intellectual  and 
moral  improvement  ;  and  it  is  obvious  that  there  is  no  remedy  for  this  but  extended 
intercourse.  Meanwhile,  probably  the  half  of  the  human  time  and  energy  of 
India  runs  to  mere  waste.  Surely,  we  need  not  wonder  at  the  poverty  of  the 
country." 

With  the  decline  thus  exhibited  in  the  domestic  commerce  there 
came,  of  course,  increase  of  difficulty  in  obtaining  the  means  required 
for  carrying  on  the  government;  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence, 
a  taxation  so  searching  as  to  embrace  not  only  all  the  instruments 
required  for  household  uses,  but  also  those,  however  small  and  insig- 
nificant, required  for  any  purpose  of  manufacture;  the  land  tax, 
meanwhile,  being  so  increased  as,  according  to  your  fellow-country- 
man Mr.  John  Bright,  to  take  from  the  wretched  laborer  from  70 
to  80  per  cent,  of  the  yield  of  land  subjected  to  a  cultivation  of  the 
most  exhaustive  kind.  Add  to  this  a  rate  of  interest  that  for  these 
miserable  people  ranged  between  30  and  60  per  cent,  per  annum, 
and  you  will,  as  I  think,  see,  Mr.  Editor,  that  the  causes  of  the 
rebellion  of  '57  lay  somewhat  deeper  than  in  the  requirement  of 
the  government  that  sepoys  should  bite  off  cartridge  ends  that 
had  been  dipped  in  grease.  Had  there  existed  no  better  reason 
than  this  the  close  of  that  rebellion  would  not  have  been  marked 
by  those  cold-blooded  murders  by  which  it  now  stands  so  much  dis- 
tinguished. Of  all  men  there  are  none  so  bitter  as  the  disappointed 
trader,  and  the  Indian  government  had  thus  far  been  simply  a  repre- 
sentation of  that  "  nation  of  shopkeepers"  whose  advent  upon  the 
stage  was  so  greatly  deprecated  by  Adam  Smith. 

With  the  close  of  that  rebellion  we  reach  the  termination  of  the 
existence  of  the  East  India  Company  as  a  territorial  power,  and  the 
commencement  of  that,  British  Indian  empire  of  which  her  majesty 
the  queen  is  hereafter  to  be  styled  the  empress.  From  that  time 
forward  the  people  of  India  were,  as  might  have  been  supposed, 
to  be  regarded  as  fellow  subjects  with  tin;  men  of  Britain,  liable 
to  performance  of  the  same  duties,  and  equally  entitled  to  claim 
re  p  id  for  rights.  Eighteen  years  having  now  already  passed  since 
such  change   in   their   political   condition   had   been   made,   we  may 


27 

here  inquire  into  the  changes  in  their  material  and  moral  condition 
that  have  been  brought  about,  as  follows: — 

The  territory  of  the  empire  equals  that  of  all  Europe,  Russia  ex- 
cepted; and  its  population  now  numbers  two  hundred  and  forty 
millions,  being  more  than  that  of  all  Europe,  like  exception  being 
made.  Of  this  vast  area  a  large  proportion,  probably  half,  be- 
longs to  the  State  as  land  proprietor,  the  revenue  thence  resulting 
being  the  rent  that  throughout  Europe  accrues  to  the  proprietor 
subject  to  claims  of  the  State  in  the  form  of  tax.  That  rent  now 
but  little  exceeds  $100,000,000,  giving  an  average  of  twenty 
cents  per  acre  from  500,000,000  acres;  and  yet  the  charge,  as  has 
been  shown,  frequently  much  exceeds  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  gross 
produce,  and  rarely  falls  below  it.  What,  under  such  circumstances, 
is  the  condition  of  the  poor  agriculturist?  What  can  be  his  power 
to  contribute  to  the  commerce  of  the  world  by  making  demand 
for  the  products  of  other  lands  I  leave  it  to  you,  Mr.  Editor,  to 
determine. 

Unable  to  obtain  farther  contributions  from  the  land,  the  govern- 
ment finds  itself  perpetually  in  need,  and  hence  it  has  been  that  a 
writei-  in  one  of  your  public  journals,  some  four  years  since,  felt 
himself  warranted  in  thus  furnishing  description  of  the  movement: — 

"  In  the  last  ten  years  the  salt  tax,  already  most  oppressive,  has  heen  five  times 
increased  ;  a  heavy  income  tax  has  heen  imposed,  and  taxes  on  feasts  and  marriages 
have  heen  proposed;  two  and  a  quarter  millions  of  people  have  died  of  famine; 
the  debt,  including  guarantees  of  badly  constructed  and  expensive  railroads,  has 
grown  to  nearly  $500,000,000,  the  sole  reliance  for  payment  of  interest  thereon  being 
now  found  in  the  continued  maintenance  of  the  power  to  poison  the  Chinese  people 
with  the  produce  of  Indian  opium  fields." 

Salt  being  a  prime  necessity  of  life,  and  the  income  derived  from 
its  consumption  being  in  the  neighborhood  of  $30,000,000,  or  almost 
a  third  of  that  derived  from  the  land,  I  have  now  to  ask  your 
attention  to  the  tax  thereon,  and  its  effects,  as  follows: — 

To  a  great  extent  the  manufacture  is  a  monopoly  in  the  hands  of 
government,  requiring  for  its  maintenance,  as  we  are  told,  an  army 
of  thirteen  thousand  men.  What  additional  supplies  are  required 
might  readily  be  obtained  from  producers  on  the  coast,  and  mainly 
from  Orissa;  but,  as  if  to  prevent  development  of  such  industry, 
the  salt  there  produced  is,  on  free  trade  principles,  equally  taxed 
with  that  brought  from  England  as  ballast  for  ships  coming  to  load 
with  rice,  jute,  cotton,  and  other  rude  products,  and  paving,  proba- 
bly, as  freight  less  than  would  be  required  for  carriage  of  the  home 
product  to  the  markets  of  the  provinces  north  and  east  of  the 
lloogly.  As  a  consequence,  these  latter  are  so  well  supplied  with 
foreign  salt  that,  at  times,  the  domestic  manufacture  is  entirely 
suspended;  poor  people  who  see  it  then  wasting  almost  at  their 
doors  being  required  to  pay  for  what  they  need  at  so  high  a  price 
that  the  fish  in  which  their  rivers  so  much  abound  is  merely  dried 
in  the  sun  to  be  thereafter  eaten  in  a  half  putrid  state.  The  cost  of 
manufacture  is  16  cents  per  cwt.  The  tax  is  104  cents,  and  it  is 
said,  therefore,  to  be  not  unusual  to  give  for  a  pound  o\'  salt  no  less 
than    nine  pounds  of  rice ;  thus  reversing  the  order  of  things  here 


28 

observed,  where  the  protected  salt  manufacturer  is  accustomed  to 
give  several  pounds  of  salt  for  a  pound  of  flour. 

The  combined  revenue  derived  from  salt,  one  of  the  most  pressing 
needs  of  India,  and  from  opium,  the  great  enemy  of  China,  varies 
little  from  $76,000,000  ;  or  three-fourths  as  much  as  the  rents  deriv- 
able from  a  territory  more  extensive  than  France,  Belgium,  Germany, 
Spain,  and  Italy  combined,  occupied  by  a  people  who  would  gladly 
work  were  they  allowed  so  to  do.  Why  is  this?  For  the  reason 
that  every  step  taken  by  the  government  has  tended  to  the  suppres- 
sion of  that  domestic  commerce  in  whose  absence  there  can  arrive 
no  such  thing  as  a  real  agriculture.  It  may  be  said,  however,  that 
railroads  have  been  constructed,  and  that  public  aid  had  been  given 
in  that  direction.  When,  however,  you,  Mr.  Editor,  shall  have  care- 
fully studied  the  facts,  you  will  see  that  these  are  merely  intended 
as  aids  to  the  foreign  trade,  enabling  cotton  to  reach  the  ports  on  the 
way  to  Manchester,  and  British  goods  to  make  their  way  more 
readily  to  the  interior,  to  the  further  destruction  of  the  little  domes- 
tic commerce  that  yet  remains. 

What  now,  under  this  admirable  "free  trade"  system,  has  become 
the  contribution  of  this  vast  country  and  its  amiable  and  well-dis- 
posed people  to  the  great  commerce  of  the  world?  Of  cotton  re- 
ceived last  year  in  Britain,  to  be  there  spun  and  Woven  and  then 
to  be  returned  to  India,  the  quantity  was  251,000,000  pounds,  the 
equivalent  of  little  more  than  half  a  million  of  American  bales. 
Outside  of  cotton  and  of  the  opium  forced  upon  China,  the  total 
annual  export,  consisting  of  rice,  jute,  tea,  coffee,  and  other  rude 
products  of  the  soil,  scarcely  exceeds  $120,000,000,  or  fifty  cents 
per  head  of  the  total  population.  Such  is  the  grand  result  at  which 
we  have  arrived  at  the  close  of  a  period  of  nearly  twenty  years, 
throughout  the  whole  of  which  the  road  to  a  great  international 
commerce  for  a  grand  Indian  empire  was,  as  the  world  has  been 
assured,  to  be  found  in  the  direction  indicated  by  the  British  free- 
trade  system ! 

What  now,  Mr.  Editor,  becomes  of  the  revenues  thus  extorted 
from  the  poor  salt  consumers  of  India,  the  degraded  opium  con- 
sumers of  China,  and  the  wretched  laborers  on  the  land  of  India? 
For  answer  to  this  question,  I  present  an  extract  from  Mr.  Torrens's 
recent  work,  "Empire  in  Asia,"  which  reads  as  follows:  — 

"  Nineteeii-twentieths  of  our  taxes  are  annually,  monthly,  it  might  almost  he  said 
daily,  respent  among  us  ;  while  of  the  revenues  of  India  a  large  portion  is  exported 
hither  to  furnish  us  with  extra  means  of  oomfort  and  of  luxury.  The  manure  is 
thus  continually  withdrawn  from  Eastern  fields  to  enrich  the  island  gardens  of  the 
West.  It  has  been  variously  estimated  that,  irrespective  of  interest  on  debt,  six, 
seven,  ami  even  eight  millions  a  year  .are  drawn  from  India,  to  be  spent  by  English- 
men either  there  or  at  home.  The  process  of  exhaustion  may  he  slow,  hut  it  is 
sure.  .  .  .  We  have  laid  the  people  and  princes  of  India  under  tribute,  and  after  a 
century  of  varied  experiments,  the  only  Hunt  of  exaction  seems  to  be  the  physical 

capacity  of  the  yield." 

Why  the  yield  is  so  very  light,  may  readily  be  understood  by 
those  who  study  on  the  shores  of  the  great  Indian  rivers,  and 
especially  on  those  of  the  Mahanadi  as  shown  in  Hunter's  "Orissa," 
the  waste  of  animal  food;   the  waste  of  vegetable  food  in  the  Pun- 


29 

jaub  and  other  provinces  of  the  North  ;  the  waste  of  life  from  fre- 
quent and  destructive  famines;  the  universal  waste  of  labor  conse- 
quent upon  an  absence  of  demand  therefor;  and  then  look  to  the 
fact  that  all  this  poverty  and  waste  are  consequent  upon  the  pursuit 
of  a  policy  which  imposes  upon  these  poor  people  a  necessity  for 
sending  the  cotton  crop  tens  of  thousands  of  miles  in  search  of  the 
little  spindle  by  aid  of  which  it  is  made  to  undergo  the  first  and 
simplest  process  of  manufacture;  to  wit,  its  conversion  into  yarn. 
Under  such  circumstances  need  we  wonder  at  the  poverty  which 
enforces  continuance  of  the  infamous  opium  traffic? 

Sir  Thomas  Munro,  than  whom  there  is  no  higher  authority,  thus 
described,  half  a  century  since,  the  people  of  this  great  country: — 

"  I  do  not  exactly  know  what  is  meant  by  civilizing  the  people  of  India.  In  the 
theory  and  practice  of  good  government  they  may  be  deficient ;  but  if  a  good  system 
of  agriculture — if  unrivalled  manufactures — if  a  capacity  to  produce  what  conve- 
nience or  luxury  demands — if  the  establishment  of  schools  for  reading  and  writing — 
if  the  general  practice  of  kindness  and  hospitality — and,  above  all,  if  a  scrupulous 
inspect  and  delicacy  towards  the  female  sex,  are  among  the  points  that  denote  a  civi- 
lized people,  then  the  Hindoos  are  not  inferior  in  civilization  to  the  people  of  Europe." 

Recently  Mr.  Torrens  has  described  the  barbarians  of  India,  the 
treatment  of  whose  descendants  at  the  hands  of  British  travellers 
and  traders  has  been  so  well  exhibited  by  Lord  Elgin,  in  the  words 
that  follow : — 

"The  governments  of  Southern  Asia,  when  we  began  to  meddle  in  their  affairs, 
were  strangers  to  the  system  of  penal  laws,  which  were  then  among  the  cherished 
institutions  of  our  own  and  nearly  every  other  European  State.  While  no  Catholic 
in  Ireland  could  inherit  freehold,  command  a  regiment,  or  sit  on  the  judicial  bench; 
while  in  France  the  Huguenot  weaver  was  driven  into  exile  beyond  sea ;  and 
while  in  Sweden  none  but  Lutherans  could  sit  as  jurors;  and  in  Spain  no  heretic 
was  permitted  Christian  burial — Sunis  and  Sheahs,  Mahrattas  and  Sikhs,  competed 
freely  for  distinction  and  profit  in  almost  every  city  and  camp  of  Hindustan.  The 
tide  of  war  ebbcl  and  flowed  as  in  Christian  lands,  leaving  its  desolating  traces  more 
or  less  deeply  marked  upon  village  homesteads  or  dilapidated  towers.  But  mosque 
and  temple  stood  unscathed  where  they  had  stood  before,  monuments  of  architectural 
taste  and  piety,  unsurpassed  for  beauty  and  richness  of  decoration  in  any  country  of 
the  world."  ...  "  Though  the  supreme  governments  were  nominally  absolute, 
there  existed  in  the  chieftains,  priesthood,  courts  of  justice,  the  municipal  system, 
and  above  all,  in  the  tenant-right  to  land,  numerous  and  powerful  barriers  in  the 
way  of  its  abuse."  ...  "  Property  was  as  carefully  protected  by  the  laws  as  in 
Europe,  and  their  infringement  sometimes  cost  a  prince  his  throne  or  life." 

It  is  the  hundred  millions  o(  an  admirable  people  thus  described 
that  have  been  so  sacrificed  at  the  Manchester  altar  as  to  have  pro- 
duced a  need  for  three  wars  having  for  their  sole  object  the  raising 
of  revenue  by  means  that  are  rapidly  bringing  about  a  demorali- 
zation of  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  Chinese  people.  May  I  not 
be  permitted  to  object  to  this,  leaving  you,  Mr.  Editor,  to  determine 
on  which  side  lie  the  "  folly  and  iniquity"  that  have  been  ciiarged? 

May  I  not  be  permitted  to  ask  you  if  the  "  free  trade"  proceed- 
ings of  the  last  twenty  years  have  tended  to  promote  the  growth  of 
commerce;  to  increase  the  admiration  of  poor  Hindoos  for  the  teach- 
ings of  the  Christian  church  ;  or  to  advance  the  cause  of  civilization  ? 

Respectfully  soliciting  a  reply  to  these  questions,  I  am, 

Yours  respectfully, 

II.  C.  CAREY. 
March  20,  1876. 


30 


LETTER  SEVENTH. 

Students  of  Roman  history,  Mr.  Editor,  are  accustomed  to  regard 
proconsular  administration  as  the  perfection  of  all  that  is  discredit- 
able and  destructive  in  the  way  of  government ;  yet  is  the  little 
finger  of  British  traders  in  India  more  oppressive  and  more  ruinous 
than  were  the  hands  and  arms  of  Yerres  and  Fonteius  as  exercised 
in  Sicily  and  Gaul.  That  these  latter  largely  robbed  the  subject 
peoples  is  very  certain;  equally  so,  however,  is  it  that,  unlike  to 
what  has  so  steadily  been  done  in  India,  they  never  struck  at  the 
sources  of  production.  Happily  for  the  provincials  the  Senate 
sought  dominion,  and  not  a  mere  monopoly  of  trade  ami  manu- 
facture. Nowhere  do  we  find  it  following  up  rebellion,  thus 
provoked,  by  measures  so  mercilessly  vindictive  as  those  which 
followed  suppression  of  that  Indian  one  of  '57.  Among  its  members 
there  were  many  who  had  "  itching  palms,"  but  nowhere  does  it 
stand  recorded  that  they  had  invoked  the  aid  of  law  for  compelling 
subject  nations  to  deal  with  them  for  pins  and  needles,  cloth  and 
iron.  Nowhere  does  the  government  present  itself  as  allied  with 
smugglers  for  forcing,  despite  all  opposition,  supplies  of  poison  on 
a  neighboring  and  friendly  nation,  thus  making  itself  from  hour  to 
hour  more  dependent  on  a  trade  debasing  to  its  subjects  and 
destined  in  the  end  to  prove  a  cause  of  their  utter  ruin. 

What  the  Hindoo  is  now,  servile  as  the  men  of  the  so-long-pro- 
tected Japanese  people  are  independent,  he  has  been  made.  What 
he  may  become,  and  how  he  may  be  led  to  act,  is  shown  in  the 
assassination  of  the  late  Viceroy,  Lord  Mayo,  whose  latest  expres- 
sion in  regard  to  dangers  to  be  apprehended  in  the  future  is  here 
given,  as  follows: — 

"A  feeling  of  discontent  and  dissatisfaction  exists  among  every  class,  both  Eu- 
ropean and  native,  on  account  of  the  constant  increase  of  taxation  which  has  for 
years  been  going  on.  My  belief  is  that  the  continuance  of  that  feeling  is  a  political 
danger,  the  magnitude  of  which  can  hardly  be  over-estimated  ;  and  any  sentiment 
of  dissatisfaction  which  may  exist  among  disbanded  soldiers  of  the  native  army  is 
as  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  state  of  general  discontent  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred. .  .  .  We  can  never  depend  for  a  moment  on  the  continuance  of  general 
tranquillity;  hut  I  believe  that  the  present  state  of  public  feeling,  as  regards  taxation, 
i^  more  likely  to  lead  to  disturbance  and  discontent,  and  he  to  us  a  source  of  greater 
danger,  than  the  partial  reduction  which  we  propose  iu  the  native  army  can  ever 
occasion.     Of  the  two  evils  1  choose  the  lesser." 

The  danger  to  be  apprehended,  as  here  is  shown,  is  that  resulting 
from  a  constantly  increasing  burthen  of  taxation  resulting  from 
an  absence  of  domestic  commerce,  and  a  constantly  increasing 
ssity  for  exporting  the  soil  in  the  form  of  cotton,  jute,  and 
other  raw  materials,  returning  nothing  to  the  land.  What,  how- 
ever, in  this  respect,  Mr.  Editor,  is  to  be  the  course  of  things 
in  the  days  to  comer'  For  answer  to  this  question  turn,  if  you 
please,  to   a   quite  recent  article  of  your  own,  and  find   therein  a 

:ommendation  to  the  poor  Hindoos  to  accept,  as  a  great "  boon"  to 


31 

themselves,  permission  to  assume  the  payment  of  $4,000,000  of 
taxes    now    paid,   as  admitted    by  the   men    of  Manchester  them-4 

selves,  by  traders  who  have  been  deluging  the  markets  of  India 
with  cottons  that  cannot  stand  a  single  washing,  in  the  hope 
thereby  to  crush  out  a  native*  manufacture  that,  under  the  stimulus 
of  a  protective  duty  of  only  5  per  cent.,  is  now  advancing  with 
such  rapidity  that  the  capital  invested  therein  had  grown  in  the 
eighteen  months  ending  in  November  last  from  twenty-two  mil- 
lions of  rupees  to  almost  forty  millions.  Turn  next  to  another 
article  but  few  days  later  in  date,  expressing  extreme  anxiety  in 
relation  to  the  constantly  diminishing  value  of  that  silver  coin 
which  now  constitutes  the  sole  currency  of  India;  and  showing 
that,  to  the  end  of  maintaining  the  salaries  of  officials  and  the 
revenues  of  British  creditors  it  may  become  necessary,  in  violation 
of  all  existing  contraets,  to  substitute  gold  for  silver  in  payment 
of  rent  and  taxes,  thereby  compelling  the  already  impoverished 
cultivator  to  use  a  metal  to  which,  as  money,  he  has  hitherto 
been  an  almost  entire  stranger  ;  that,  too,  at  a  time  when  the 
demand  therefor  increases  from  day  to  day,  with  corresponding 
decrease  in  the  supply  derived  from  Australia  and  from  our  Pacific 
States,  and  as  steady  increase  in  the  power  of  the  money  lender  to 
demand  payment  for  its  use. 

Less  than  twenty  years  since,  alarmed  at  the  idea  of  a  deluge 
of  gold,  attended  with  constant  decrease  in  its  value  as  compared 
with  silver,  M.  Chevalier,  as  anxious  then  in  relation  to  government 
and  other  creditors  as  you,  Mr.  Editor,  now  are,  proposed  a  de- 
moralization of  the  nobler  metal,  and  in  this  idea  he  was  supported, 
as  I  think,  by  Mr.  Cobden.  Had  their  anticipations  been  realized, 
and  had  their  suggestions  been  carried  into  practical  effect,  silver 
would  have  been  steadily  growing  in  price,  enabling  the  Indian 
government  to  pay  with  four  or  five  ounces  as  much  interest  as  it 
now  pays  with  six.  Would  that,  however,  have  led  to  any  such 
movement  toward  diminution  of  rents,  as  is  now  proposed  in  refer- 
ence to  their  increase?  Not  at  all,  and  for  the  reason  that,  as  we 
here  are  told  by  M.  De  Tocqueville — 

"  In  the  eyes  of  the  English,  that  which  is  most  useful  to  Eugland  is  always  the 
cause  of  justice.  The  man  or  the  government  which  serves  the  interests  of  England 
has  all  sorts  of  good  qualities  ;  he  who  hurts  those  interests,  all  sorts  of  defects;  so 
that  it  would  seem  that  the  criterion  of  what  is  right,  or  nohle,  or  just,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  degree  of  favor  or  opposition  to  English  interests." 

That,  in  face  of  Lord  Mayo's  serious  admonition,  any  such 
measure  of  confiscation,  or,  indeed,  any  one  of  increased  taxation, 
will  be  adopted,  can  hardly  be  believed  ;  and  you  yourself,  Mr. 
Editor,  seem  to  regard  it  as  being  doubtful  in  high  degree.  Some- 
thing, however,  must  be  done  if  the  credit  of  the  government  is  to 
be  maintained.  What  shall  it  be?  Where- shall  we  look?  To 
the  one  and  only  source  tkat,  as  you  yourself  so  clearly  see,  can  be  at 
all  relied  upon,  to  wit,  a  further  development  of  the  infamous 
opium  trade;  that  being  the  point  at  which  the  Head  of  the  British 
Church,  her  ministers,  Parliament,  and  bench  of  bishops,  have  ar- 


32 

rived  at  the  close  of  almost  twenty  years  of  imperial  and  free-trade 
government  of  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  people  of  whom  the 
population  of  her  majesty's  Indian  empire  now  consists;  and  who, 
before  the  invasion  of  your  countrymen,  constituted  one  of  the  most 
highly  civilized  and  self-supporting  [rations  of  the  world. 

Loud  and  frequent,  Mr.  Editor,  have  been  the  commendations  by 
your  journal  of  the  admirable  conduct  of  the  government,  and  of  Sir 
Bartle  Frere,  in  endeavoring  wholly  to  suppress  the  little  remaining 
slave  trade  of  Eastern  Africa.  Singularly  enough,  however,  it  has 
rarely,  if  even  ever,  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  there  had  been 
developed  in  Eastern  Asia,  and  by  Englishmen,  a  slave  trade  such 
as  is  here  below  described  : — 

"  Betweeu  the  intoxication  of  ardent  spirits  and  that  of  opium,"  says  a  writer  in 
the  Chinese  lie/iository,  "  there  is  but  one  point  more  of  difference  deserving  of  particu- 
lar attention,  and  that  is  the  lev/old  force  with  which  every  argument  against  the 
former  applies  to  the  latter.  There  is  no  slavery  on  earth  to  be  compared  with  the 
bondage  into  which  opium  casts  its  victim.  There  is  scarcely  one  known  instance  of 
escape  from  its  toils,  when  once  they  have  fairly  enveloped  a  man.  The  fact  is  far 
too  notorious  to  be  questioned  for  one  moment,  that  there  is  in  opium,  when  once  in- 
dulge.I  in,  a  fatal  fascination  which  needs  almost  superhuman  powers  of  self-denial, 
and  also  capacity  for  the  endurance  of  pain  to  overcome.  The  operation  of  opium  is, 
on  this  account,  far  more  deadly  by  many  degrees  than  its  less  tyrannous  rival. 

"It  is  tlie  after  or  secondary  effects  of  this  drug  which  have  such  a  destructive  in- 
fluence on  the  constitution.  Its  continued  use  destroys  the  natural  appetite—  de- 
ranges the  digestive  organs — impedes  the  circulation,  and  vitiates  the  quality  of  the 
blood — depresses  the  spirits,  and  gradually  weakens  the  power  of  the  involuntary 
nerves  as  well  as  the  volitions  of  the  mind  ;  thereby  taking  away  the  powers  of  free 
agency,  and  converting  the  man  into  the  brute.  How  expressive  the  remark  once 
made  by  a  distinguished  mandariu:  It  is  not  the  man  that  ectts  the  opium,  but  it  is  opium 
that  eats  the  man." 

Might  it  not  be  well  that  the  British  people  should  free  them- 
selves from  the  beam  that  obstructs  their  own  sense  of  vision  before 
undertaking  to  remove  the  mote  that  dims  the  sight  of  the  Sultan 
of  Zanzibar  ? 

How  this  horrible  traffic,  Mr.  Editor,  affects  the  progress  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  East  is  shown,  says  a  writer  in  the  Contemporary  Re- 
herein  before  referred  to,  by  the  fact  that  sixteen  missionaries 
writing  in  Canton  and  belonging  to  different  nations  and  denomi- 
nations, concurred  in  the  spring  of  last  year  (1875)  in  stating  that 

"The  fad  that  people  of  Christian  nations  engage  in  the  traffic,  and  especially  that 
fir' at  Britain  to  a  large  extent  supplies  the  China  market  with  opium,  is  constantly 
urged  as  a  plausible  and  patent  objection  to  Christianity." 

Even  more  emphatic  was  the  language  used  by  the  Bishop  of 
Victoria  (  1  [ong    l\"ii;j) — 

'•  I  have  been  again  and  again  stopped  while  preaohing,  with  the  question,  'Are 

you  an  Englishman  .'      1^  not  that  the  country  that  opium  comes  from  ?     (io  back  and 

■top  it,  and  then  we  will  talk  about  Christianity.'  " 

Thai  the  christianizing  and  civilizing  effects  of  the  system  thus 

maintained   by  the  beads  of  the  Protestant   Episcopal  Church  of 

ad   an-   not.    limited    to  China    is,    Mr.   Kditor,    proved  by  an 

English   missionary  in    Rangoon   who  states  the  humiliating  fact, 

thai   before  the   I.  .one  to  Burmah  drunkenness  and  opium 

were  almosl    unknown,   but    that    those    evils    have    now 


33 

spread  so  rapidly  that  a  great  part  of  the  revenue  of  the  government 
is  derived  therefrom. 

From  an  Eastern  proverb,  Mr.  Editor,  we  learn  that  "curses  like 
young  chickens  always  come  home  to  roost."  For  evidence  that 
the  truth  of  this  is  proved  among  yourselves,  and  that  the  "curse" 
inflicted  upon  China  by  the  British  people  and  their  government 
has  now  really  arrived  at  home,  allow  me  to  ask  your  attention  to 
the  facts  here  given  as  to  the  growing  intemperance  among  the 
people  by  whom  you  yourself  are  surrounded,  readers  of  the  Times 
and  others,  as  follows: — 

Consumption  of  intoxicating  liquors  in  the  United  Kingdom — 

18fi0.  1869.  Inc.  p.  c. 

Spirits,  foreign  and  domestic.  .  26,924,611  30,114,624  11.84 
Beer,  ale,  and  porter  ....  674,170,326  895,004,412  31.27 
Wine 6,718,585       14,723,534     119.31 


Aggregate 707,814,922     929,842,570      31.37 

The  population  in  this  period  increased  7|  per  cent. 

The  first  of  these  years  was  one  of  great  prosperity,  American 
free  trade  making  large  demand  for  the  products  of  British  furnaces 
and  mills.  The  second  was  one  of  still  continued  depression  result- 
ing from  the  great  financial  crisis  of  1866.  None  of  the  increased 
consumption  of  liquor  can,  therefore,  be  traced  to  excitement  in  the 
demand  for  labor,  or  to  increase  of  money  wages.  All  the  facts 
connected  with  the  consumption  of  commodities  other  than  liquor 
tend,  on  the  contrary,  so  far  as  they  have  come  to  my  knowledge, 
to  prove  a  diminution  of  consumptive  power. 

Seeking,  Mr.  Editor,  to  understand  the  causes  of  the  growing 
demoralization  thus  exhibited,  you  need,  as  I  think,  do  little  more 
than  turn  to  the  new  Doomsday  Book,  there  to  find  that  by  aid  of 
taxes  levied  upon  the  people  of  the  world  at  large  12,000  per- 
sons have  been  enabled  to  centre  in  themselves  the  ownership  of 
thirty  out  of  the  thirty-four  millions  of  acres  of  English  land  in  any 
manner  susceptible  of  improvement.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  half 
of  Scotland  is  owned  by  about  twenty  persons  ;  thereafter  finding  in 
wretched  agricultural  laborers  the  descendants  of  the  small  pro- 
prietors, and  the  cottagers,  of  the  days  of  Adam  Smith  and  Arthur 
Young,  and  you  will  find  but  little  difficulty  in  understanding 
why  such  things  are.  The  more  that  land  is  monopolized  the 
greater  is  the  tendency  toward  division  of  its  occupants  into  two 
great  classes — the  very  poor  and  the  very  rich — slaves  on  one  hand 
and  masters  on  the  other.  So  was  it  in  Korne.  So  has  it  been  in 
our  Southern  States.  So  is  it  now  in  India.  How  it  is  in  Britain 
is  clearly  shown  in  the  following  passages  descriptive  of  the  ex- 
tremes of  society,  from  one  of  the  most  respectable  of  English  jour- 
nals : — 

"It  is  coming  rapidly  to  this — that  a  first-class  leader  of  society  with  a  first-class 
fortune,  to  be  '  on  a  level  with  his  position,'  wants,  or  chooses  to  think  he  wauts,  a 
house  in  Loudon,  a  house  on  the  river,  two  palaces  at  least  in  the  country,  a  shoot- 
3 


34 

ing  box  in  the  Highlands,  a  hotel  iu  Paris  as  costly  as  his  London  house,  a  villa  at 
Como  ;  a  floor  in  Rome,  an  establishment  in  Cairo  or  Constantinople,  a  yacht,  a 
theatre,  and  a  racing  stud,  and  then  thinks  that  life  is  as  monotonous  as  it  was 
when  "in  his  cool  hall,  with  haggard  eyes,  the  Roman  noble  lay.'  " — Spectator. 

"Children  of  both  sexes  and  of  all  ages,  from  five  up  to  sixteen,  are,  in  fact,  sold 
by  the  wretched  laborers  to  the  gang-masters  at  so  much  per  head  per  week,  gene- 
rally, we  are  bound  to  add,  out  of  the  direst  poverty.  The  ganger,  having  collected 
his  children,  takes  them  away  to  his  job,  forcing  them  to  walk,  or,  if  needful,  to  carry 
each  other,  for  distances,  which  often  involve  of  themselves  great  cruelty.  Five 
miles  out  and  five  back  is  thought  nothing  of,  in  addition  to  almost  continuous  labor 

for  at  least  ten  hours  a  day The  laborers  in  many  English  parishes  are 

coarse  enough,  but  among  these  poor  wretches  civilization  disappears.  .  .  .  The 
single  amusement  is  obscene  talk,  which  becomes  so  shocking  that  the  very  laborers 
are  revolted,  and  declare  they  would  sooner  turn  out  of  the  road  than  meet  the  gangs 
returning.  All  the  offices  of  nature,  say  twenty  witnesses,  are  performed  in  public 
by  both  sexes,  without  the  faintest  effort  at  concealment.  Boys  and  girls  of  all  ages 
bathe  together  stark  naked,  and  the  most  infamous  actions  are  boasted  of  with  a 
shamelessness  rarely  found  among  savages." — Ibid. 

When,  Mr.  Editor,  you  shall  have  given  full  consideration  to 
the  several  facts  that  thus  far  have  been  presented,  you  will,  as  I 
think,  be  led  to  the  conclusion,  that,  in  ascribing  to  those  who, 
in  common  with  Adam  Smith,  believe  in  the  advantage  of  do- 
mestic commerce  as  compared  with  foreign  trade  an  entire  mono- 
poly of  economical  "ignorance  and  inability,  folly  and  iniquity," 
you  have  made  a  mistake  so  serious  as  to  warrant  careful  recon- 
sideration of  the  whole  subject  matter.  The  more  thoroughly  that 
shall  be  given,  the  more  must  you  be  led  to  appreciate  the  im- 
portance of  looking  inward  and  seeing  "oursel's  as  others  see  us;" 
the  more,  as  I  think,  must  you  be  led  to  the  conclusion  that  in  the 
views  here  below  presented  by  the  great  political  philosopher  of  the 
age,  there  is  so  large  an  amount  of  truth  as  should  make  it  impera- 
tive on  the  part  of  every  right-minded  Englishman  to  review  the 
past  with  a  desire  to  amend  proceedings  in  the  future. 

"  The  Indian  mutiny  and  the  Crimean  war  show  the  little  sympathy  for  England 
abroad.  ...  I  venture  to  affirm  that  the  whole  Continent,  though  it  detested 
the  cruelties  of  your  enemies,  did  not  wish  you  to  triumph.  Much  of  this  is,  with- 
out doubt,  to  be  attributed  to  the  evil  passions  which  make  men  always  desire  the 
fall  of  the  prosperous  and  the  strong.  But  much  belongs  to  a  less  dishonorable 
cause — to  the  conviction  of  all  nations  that  England  considers  them  only  with  refer- 
ence to  her  own  greatness  ;  that  she  has  less  sympathy  than  any  other  modern  na- 
tion ;  that  she  never  notices  what  passes  among  foreigners,  what  they  think,  feel, 
suffer,  or  do,  but  with  relation  to  the  use  which  England  can  make  of  their  actions, 
their  Bufferings,  their  feelings,  or  their  thoughts;  and  that  when  she  seems  to  care 
most  for  them,  she  really  cares  only  for  herself.  All  this  is  exaggerated,  but  not 
without  truth." — De  Tocqueville,  Correspondence  and  Conversations  with  N.  W.  Senior, 
Loudon, 1872. 

Since  the  date  of  the  letter  from  which  this  passage  has  been  taken, 
little  less  than  twenty  years  have  passed.  Have  they  in  their  course 
exhibited  any  improvement  in  the  modes  of  thought  among  your 
countrymen  ?  Have  these  latter  become  less  selfish  than  they  be- 
fore had  been  ?  For  answer  to  this  question  allow  me  to  refer  you 
to  your  own  comments,  now  not  a  fortnight  old,  upon  Lord  Salis- 
bury's lame  defence  of  his  Indian  policy,  to  the  end  that  you  may 
determine  for  yourself  if  they  exhibit  a  single  liberal  or  generous 
word  in  reference  to  the  poor  Chinamen;  a  single  word  calculated 


35 

for  bringing  home  to  the  minds  of  your  readers  perception  of  the 
fact  that  relief  to  Manchester  could  be  looked  for  in  but  one  direc- 
tion, to  wit,  to  the  extension  of  a  trade  more  disgraceful  to  the 
nation  engaged  therein  than  any  other  that  stands  recorded,  the  slave 
trade  not  excepted.  The  Africans  imported  into  the  British  Ame- 
rican possessions,  insular  and  continental,  numbered  less  than  two 
and  a  half  millions;  not  a  tithe  as  many  as  the  Chinese  who  have 
already  been  enslaved  and  ruined  by  means  of  an  enforced  traffic 
whose  long-continued  maintenance  must  for  all  the  future  stand  ai 
evidence  that,  to  this  hour  at  least,  Britain  had  had  no  national  con- 
science whatsoever. 

Begging  you  now  to  remark,  Mr.  Editor,  that  all  the  "folly  and 
iniquity"  thus  exhibited  comes  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  a  de- 
termination not  to  permit  the  people  of  India  to  participate  with 
protected  nations  in  the  advantages  resulting  from  growth  of  that 
domestic  commerce  so  much  admired  by  Adam  Smith, 
I  remain  yours,  respectfully, 

HENRY  C.  CAREY. 

Philadelphia,  March  25,  1876. 


LETTER  EIGHTH. 

I*r  conclusion,  Mr.  Editor,  allow  me  now  to  call  your  attention  to 
some  important  facts  that  present  themselves  for  consideration  on 
a  survey  of  the  world  at  large,  as  follows: — 

The  Turkish  Empire  possesses  in  an  abundance  almost  every 
natural  advantage.  Neverthless,  having  been  forced  to  submit  to 
British  free  trade  policy,  her  domestic  commerce  has  disappeared, 
and  she  herself  has  become  so  utterly  ruined  that  foreign  govern- 
ments are  now  preparing  to  administer  on  her  estate,  to  the  end 
that  their  own  subjects  may  be  enabled  to  obtain  some  portion  of 
their  claims. 

India,  forced  to  submit  to  a  free  trade  policy,  is  now,  for  means 
with  which  to  pay  the  mere  interest  on  her  debts,  wholly  dependent 
on  her  ability  to  extend  the  destructive  and  infamous  opium  trade. 
_  Peru,  the  States  of  the  La  Plata,  and  other  of  the  Spanish  Ame- 
rican States  that  have  been  mainly  dependent  upon  Britain,  are  in  a 
state  of  financial  ruin. 

Australia,  self-governing  and  determined  on  the  establishment  of 
a  domestic  commerce,  is  now,  on  the  contrary,  so  prosperous  that 
immigration  is  rapidly  taking  the  place  of  the  emigration  that  had 
commenced. 

Prussia,  having,  after  many  years  of  effort,  established  for  Ger- 
many a  perfectly  free  domestic  commerce,  finds  herself  now  in  the 
lead  of  one  of  the  most  powerful  empires  of  the  world. 

France,  always  intelligently  protective,  is  to-day  commercially 
more  independent  than  any  other  country  of  the  world. 


36 


I 


Prior  to  1860  these  United  States,  as  has  been  shown,  with  two 
brief  and  brilliant  exceptions,  were  subjected  to  an  almost  free 
trade  system,  as  a  consequence  of  which  exchanges  between  the 
North  and  the  South  were  effected  through  the  port  of  Liverpool, 
which  thus  was  constituted  the  great  hub  of  American  commerce- 
As  a  further  consequence,  all  the  main  lines  of  road  ran  from  west 
to  east,  the  absence  of  domestic  commerce  making  it  quite  impossi- 
ble that  north  and  south  roads  could  profitably  be  made.  The  warp 
was  there  but  the  filling  was  not,  and  the  more  the  former  grew  in 
size  and  strength,  the  greater  became  the  tendency  toward  separation 
of  those  parts  of  the  Union  which  believed  in  the  freedom  of  man 
from  those  whose  belief  in  the  morality  of  human  slavery  became 
more  and  more  confirmed  as  the  necessity  for  abandoning  their  ex- 
hausted lands,  and  for  transferring  their  slaves  to  those  of  newer 
States  became  more  imperative.  Of  all  this  the  late  rebellion  was 
a  necessary  consequence,  the  offering  thereby  made  on  the  free  trade 
altar  counting  in  lives  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  in  treasure 
by  thousands  of  millions. — Since  1860,  the  policy  of  the  country 
has  looked  in  a  contrary  direction,  toward  the  establishment  of  do- 
mestic intercourse;  as  a  consequence  of  which  northern  and  south- 
ern roads,  by  means  of  which  the  various  parts  of  the  Union  are 
to  be  tied  together,  have  now  been  made,  with  a  growth  of  internal 
commerce  that  places  the  country  fully  on  a  par  with  any  other  na- 
tion of, the  world.  So  much,  Mr.  Editor,  for  having,  although  now 
for  only  fifteen  years,  conformed  our  policy  to  the  teachings  of  that 
greatest  of  economists,  Adam  Smith. 

Compare  now,  Mr.  Editor,  the  contributions  to  the  general  com- 
merce of  the  world  made  by  those  countries  whose  policy  tends 
toward  development  of  domestic  commerce,  with  those  made  by 
communities  subjected  to  the  British  free  trade  despotism,  and  then 
determine  for  yourself  which  are  the  parties  to  this  discussion  most 
justly  chargeable  with  the  "ignorance  and  imbecility"  of  which  you 
have  so  freely  spoken ;  and  believe  me, 

Yours,  respectfully, 

HENRY  C.  CAREY. 

Philadelphia,  March  27,  1876. 


LIBRARY 
UNIVERSIT  {  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


58  00562  2849 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001  165  042 


